SAPinsider Feed, Q&Ashttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Feeds/Assets/Q-and-As
Syndicates SAPinsider question-and-answer sessions (Q&As)How Accounts Payable Can Improve Fraud Detection with Robotics and Machine Learninghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2018/February/preventing-fraud-with-integrated-AP-and-payments-processing
Join experts from Hanse Orga and Dolphin experts to discuss how to optimize and centralize Accounts Payable and Payments processing to improve compliance and reduce the risk of fraud.Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:04:00 GMTThe Basics of Basis Administrationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2018/January/Basics-of-Basis-Administration
<p>Live chat about Basis administration to ensure your SAP landscape runs smoothly and efficiently.</p>Wed, 17 Jan 2018 19:10:00 GMTMigrating to the Newest Version of SAP Lumirahttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2018/January/migrating-to-the-newest-version-of-SAP-Lumira
Abhishek Jain and Sandeep Khare from TekLink will share advice on mapping your migration path from SAP Lumira 1.X and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.X to the newest version of SAP Lumira.Wed, 10 Jan 2018 23:28:00 GMTTransition to Real-Time Analytics on SAP S/4HANA 1610 and SAP BW/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/real-time-analytics-on-SAP-S4HANA-1610-and-SAP-BW4HANA
<P>Join BI & HANA 2018 speaker and consultant Bill Faison and Colin Hart from Method360 to gain real-world insight into what you need to be thinking about now for your SAP S/4HANA and/or SAP BW/4HANA deployment. </P>Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:57:00 GMTSAP Capture Solutions: The First Step in Digital Transformationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/SAP-capture-solutions
<P>Join this live Q&A session with SAP and OpenText experts to get answers to your questions on how to craft a digital strategy for acquisition of data delivered through nonelectronic channels. </P>Thu, 14 Dec 2017 16:43:00 GMTTransition to SAP S/4HANA Financehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/transition-to-SAP-S4HANA-Finance
<p>Join Quality Systems & Software’s Mitresh Kundalia for a Live Q&A on the various considerations associated with a migration, implementation, or upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Finance.</p>Tue, 12 Dec 2017 20:44:00 GMTBuilding a Bullet-Proof Cybersecurity Program with SAP Process Control and SAP Risk Managementhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/cybersecurity-with-SAP-Process-Control-and-SAP-Risk-Management
<p>Attend a Live Q&A with EY’s Natalie Reuss to find out how you can use SAP Process Control to manage and evaluate common vulnerability areas.</p>Thu, 07 Dec 2017 21:35:37 GMTNavigate the Complexities of Big Data with SAP Vorahttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/Big-Data-and-SAP-Vora
<p>Join this upcoming live Q&A to learn more about how SAP Vora helps democratize data access in order to help you make better business decisions.</p>Wed, 06 Dec 2017 15:20:00 GMTPast-to-Present SAP Access Management Best Practiceshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/December/SAP-access-management-best-practices
<P>SAP and Security Weaver experts Sumit Sanga and Steve DuBravac share advice on the current and emerging best practices for SAP ERP access management and role design.</p>Tue, 05 Dec 2017 20:44:00 GMTHow SAP IT Operations Analytics Can Boost Performance across the IT Landscapehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/November/SAP-IT-Operations-Analytics-chat
<p>Join this upcoming live Q&A to learn more about what SAP IT Operations Analytics can do and whether it’s right for your business.</p>Wed, 29 Nov 2017 20:25:00 GMTThe Road to SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/November/road-to-SAP-S4HANA
<p>Join SAP's Matt Makaila and Carl Dubler for a live Q&A to learn more about the path to SAP S/4HANA for your company and tools you can use.</p>Wed, 08 Nov 2017 15:26:27 GMTSecuring SAP Systemshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/November/securing-SAP-systems
<p>Join cybersecurity experts from Virtual Forge to find out how to secure your SAP landscape from cyber threats.</p>Mon, 06 Nov 2017 23:00:36 GMTBuild an Integrated Financial Platform Strategy for SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/October/Integrated-financial-platform-strategy-SAP-S4HANA
<p>Best practices for how you can reduce risk and improve your return on investment in SAP S/4HANA Finance.</p>Thu, 19 Oct 2017 16:30:00 GMTWhat You Need to Know About SAP SuccessFactors Compensation and Variable Pay Solutionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/October/SAP-SuccessFactors-Compensation-and-Variable-Pay-Solutions
<p>HR 2017 speaker Jeremy Masters on how to deliver a corporate-wide employee compensation management solution for merit, bonus, and stock programs.</p>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:00:00 GMTOptimize Your Supply Chain with SAP Solutionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/October/Optimize-Your-Supply-Chain-with-SAP-Solutions
<p>Join SCM Optimization Bootcamp speakers Martin Rowan and David Carol to ask your questions and get expert advice on a wide range of supply chain optimization topics for SAP-centric organizations.&nbsp;</p> <ul> </ul>Wed, 04 Oct 2017 16:30:00 GMTCybersecurity Considerations for SAP Mobile Applicationshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/October/cybersecurity-SAP-mobile-applications
<P>Join us for a Live Q&A with Onapsis’ Juan Perez-Etchegoyen to get answers to your most pressing questions around SAP mobile security.</P>Mon, 02 Oct 2017 21:46:06 GMTBuild Industry Solutions with SAP S/4HANA and IBM Watson deployed on IBM Cloudhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/October/industry-solutions-with-SAP-S4HANA-and-IBM-Watson-deployed-on-IBM-Cloud
<P>IBM experts including Sanjay Das and Joe Gallego share advice on creating industry solutions are created and running SAP and Watson solutions on IBM Cloud.</p>Mon, 02 Oct 2017 20:01:01 GMTMigrating SAP Applications to the Cloud, Lessons from the Front Lineshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/September/migrating-SAP-applications-to-the-cloud
<p>Virtustream engineers answer reader questions and share in-depth technical details about greenfield deployments, SAP HANA migrations, upgrades, and much more.</p>Wed, 20 Sep 2017 19:41:00 GMTAdvice on SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Documents and Universeshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/September/Query-the-SAP-BusinessObjects-Web-Intelligence-Experts
<P>Get expert advice on SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence documents and universes.</p>Wed, 20 Sep 2017 16:30:00 GMTSAP BPC on SAP BW/4HANA and SAP BPC on SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/September/SAP-BPC-on-SAP-BW4HANA-and-SAP-S4HANA
<p>Live chat with Scott Cairncross on the latest features and functionality.</p>Thu, 14 Sep 2017 05:00:00 GMTExploring Accounts Payable Automation from A to Zhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/September/live-chat-AP-automation
<p>Join Esker experts for a live Q&A to explore AP automation for SAP customers.</p>Wed, 06 Sep 2017 14:41:00 GMTDigitize & Transform Procure-to-Pay with SAP Ariba Solutionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/August/P2P-with-SAP-Ariba-solutions
<p>Join experts from SAP and B4 Consulting for a live chat on SAP Ariba solutions.</p>Thu, 03 Aug 2017 04:30:00 GMTFast-Track and Maximize Your Move to SAP S/4HANA Financehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/June/BlackLine-moving-to-SAP-S4HANA-Finance
<p>Join this live Q&A with experts from BlackLine and SAP to ask your specific questions about modernizing your data, preparing for future innovation, and migrating to the cloud.</p>Thu, 22 Jun 2017 19:37:00 GMTProtect Your SAP HANA Environment: Live Q&A on Security Best Practiceshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/June/protect-your-SAP-HANA-environment
<p>Join experts from Hitachi and SUSE for a live Q&A on security best practices for your SAP HANA environment after go-live.</p>Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:54:00 GMTElevating HR to New Heights in the Cloudhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/June/SAP-elevating-HR-to-new-heights
Live Q&amp;A on achieving digital transformation in HR with SAP SuccessFactors solutions.Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:31:00 GMTPrepare Your Enterprise Data for a Move to SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/June/prepare-data-for-SAP-HANA-and-SAP-S4HANA
Join Dolphin SAP HANA experts on crafting a successful information management strategy.Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:11:00 GMTDriving Innovation With Integrationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/June/SEEBURGER-driving-innovation-with-integration
<p>Join this live Q&A on adopting new technologies while preserving business-critical SAP processes.</p>Fri, 09 Jun 2017 15:56:27 GMTABAP Development Chathttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/May/ABAP-development-chat
<p>insiderBOOKS author Faisal Altaf answers questions on using ABAP in real-world scenarios.</p>Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:06 GMTWhat's Next with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and SAP BusinessObjects Lumira 2.0http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/May/whats-next-with-SAP-BusinessObjects-Design-Studio-and-SAP-BusinessObjects-Lumira-2-0
Join SAP BI experts Jeroen van der A and Xavier Hacking of Interdobs to learn more about what's coming next for SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and SAP BusinessObjects Lumira 2.0.Thu, 04 May 2017 10:00:00 GMTOptimizing SAP BW on SAP HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/May/Optimizing-SAP-BW-on-SAP-HANA
<p>Join HANA 2017 speaker Dirk Morgenroth for a live Q&amp;A on identifying, enabling, and making use of pushed-down capabilities to optimize performance.</p>Tue, 02 May 2017 13:00:00 GMTProduct Profitability and New Materials Ledger on SAP S/4HANA Financehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/May/product-profitability-and-new-materials-ledger-on-SAP-S4HANA-Finance
<p>Find out how to leverage the integrated SAP S/4HANA universal journal (ACDOCA) and materials ledger (MATDOCA) to track product profitability components of cost and revenue at a granular level.</P>Mon, 01 May 2017 11:00:00 GMTRunning SAP on the IBM BlueMix Infrastructure Platform: Live Q&A on IaaS Deployment Optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/running-SAP-on-the-IBM-BlueMix-infrastructure-platform
Learn how IBM Cloud can be customized to meet your organization&rsquo;s managed and unmanaged SAP cloud needs and get advice on how you can successfully deploy your applications, including SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA.Thu, 27 Apr 2017 04:00:00 GMTSAP BI Product Convergence Update: What's Happening Today, What is Coming Next, and What Does It Mean for You?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/SAP-BI-product-convergence-update
Take a look at the road ahead for SAP’s BI products, assess your opportunities, and seek clarifications.Thu, 20 Apr 2017 04:00:00 GMTMeet the Intelligent ERP: Live Q&A with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Executives on Continuous Innovation, Intelligent Use Cases & Customer Successhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/explore-SAP-S4HANA-Cloud
<p>Join SAP S/4HANA Cloud executives Toby Davison, Özgür Otluoglu, and Marco Valencia to explore SAP S/4HANA Cloud's capabilities and the business benefits it brings.</p>Wed, 12 Apr 2017 20:42:52 GMTPreparing for an SAP HANA Upgrade: Q&A on Techniques and Strategieshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/preparing-for-an-SAP-HANA-upgrade
<p>Join Basis & SAP Administration 2017 speaker Deb Donohoe and her colleague Christian Baessler to get expert advice on choosing an upgrade path, planning tools, unicode conversion and more. </p>Wed, 12 Apr 2017 19:21:00 GMTIntegrating SAP On-Premise Systems with SAP Hybris Cloud for Customerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/integrating-SAP-with-SAP-Hybris-Cloud-for-Customer
<p>Join Customer Engagement & Commerce 2017 speaker Christian Matz for a live Q&A on the different integration scenarios and technical options.</p>Tue, 11 Apr 2017 13:30:00 GMTTowards Zero Downtime for SAP HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/zero-downtime-for-SAP-HANA
<p>Join technical architect Peter Schinagl of SUSE for a live Q&amp;A on best practices for ensuring high availability and preparing disaster recovery scenarios.</p>Thu, 06 Apr 2017 20:44:26 GMTBuilding Reports with SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligencehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/April/building-reports-with-SAP-BusinessObjects-Web-Intelligence
<p>Join SAPinsider BI 2017 Amsterdam speaker Kristof Gramm to get expert advice on topics like creating cascading stylesheets, integrating SAPUI5 icons, and more.</p>Tue, 04 Apr 2017 19:07:11 GMTHow You Can Benefit from the Values of IBM Power in Your Journey to SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/March/IBM-Power-for-SAP-HANA
<p>Learn about specific actions you can take and best practices you can follow to successfully deploy SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA on IBM Power Systems.</p>Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:46:18 GMTClearing Open Items in SAP Systems: Q&A on Best Practices for Reconciliation and Automationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/March/clearing-open-items-in-SAP-systems
<P>Join BlackLine’s Michael Gilmartin and Stephen Wolfman to get tips and to learn best practices for reconciling open item accounts.</P>Thu, 02 Mar 2017 23:12:12 GMTProven Techniques and Strategies to Fortify Your SAP Landscape from Cybersecurity Threatshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/March/fortify-your-SAP-landscape-from-cybersecurity-threats
<p>Join SAPinsider GRC 2017 speaker Peter Hobson for a deep dive into cybersecurity as it relates to your SAP landscape.</p>Thu, 02 Mar 2017 17:30:00 GMTInformation Governance: Setting and Enforcing your Data Policy Decisionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/March/setting-and-enforcing-data-policy-decisions
<p>Learn the basics of setting and enforcing data policy decisions and why this is critical for your business.</p>Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:20:51 GMTOptimizing Supply Chain Visibility with SAP Transportation Managementhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/February/optimizing-supply-chain-visibility-with-SAP-TM
<p>Yangpeng Tan answers questions on getting the most out of SAP TM tools to support decision making and optimize carrier selection.</p>Thu, 09 Feb 2017 20:20:00 GMTOptimizing SAP CRM and SAP ERP Integration: Q&A on Improving Data Transfer, User Experience, and Customer Servicehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/February/SAP-CRM-and-SAP-ERP-integration
<P>Customer Engagement & Commerce 2017 speaker Allen Roholt shares best practices and methodology needed to optimize your integration processes between SAP CRM and SAP ERP.</p>Wed, 08 Feb 2017 19:00:00 GMTTechniques to Optimize Marketing Lead Management and Key Account Management Processes within SAP CRMhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/February/using-SAP-CRM-for-lead-management
<p>Join our live Q&A with Customer Engagement & Commerce 2017 speaker Dr. Ahmed Hezzah to get advice implementing and optimizing end-to-end sales and marketing processes within SAP CRM.</p>Thu, 02 Feb 2017 17:11:00 GMTKey Integration Techniques to Take Advantage of an SAP-to-SAP EWM solutionhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/February/SAP-EWM-integration-techniques
<p>Expert advice on the importance of gaining integration visibility between systems, and on how to leverage SAP EWM to simplify the process.</p>Wed, 01 Feb 2017 18:30:00 GMTSAP HANA Administration Chat: Kurt Hollis on Architecture, Monitoring, and Morehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/January/SAP-HANA-administration-chat
Join HANA 2017 speaker Kurt Hollis for a Q&A on implementing and administering SAP HANA. Ideal for members of an organization that has recently implemented or is planning to implement SAP HANA.Tue, 31 Jan 2017 05:00:00 GMTHow to Optimize Your Migration to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central: Live Q&A with Ari Levinhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/January/how-to-optimize-SAP-SuccessFactors-Employee-Central
Join this Q&A with HR 2017 speaker Ari Levin to gain insights in the migration to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.Wed, 25 Jan 2017 05:00:00 GMTWhat does SAP HANA Live mean for reporting and analytics?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/January/what-SAP-HANA-Live-means-for-reporting-and-analytics
Join us as BI 2017 speaker Rob Frye of Comerit and his team at Comerit Labs answer questions on the deployment, installation, and features of SAP HANA Live.Tue, 24 Jan 2017 05:00:00 GMTLive Q&A: Take the stress off your SAP Access Control 10.1 implementationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2017/January/SAP-Access-Control-10-1-implementation
Get answers to your questions on SAP Access Control 10.1 implementations, from budget and personnel resources to common pain points and blueprinting best practices.Thu, 19 Jan 2017 05:00:00 GMTHow SAP Fiori Impacts SAP HR Functionality: Q&A with Jeremy Masters on the Roadmap for HR Renewal and SAP SuccessFactorshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/December/how-SAP-Fiori-impacts-SAP-HR-functionality
Join us for a live Q&A on SAP Fiori's place in SAP HR roadmap. Jeremy Masters will answer questions on implementing HR Renewal, new Fiori self-service applications, and more.Tue, 13 Dec 2016 05:00:00 GMTWhat's Coming in 2017 for SAP BusinessObjects BI? Q&A with SAP Mentor Tammy Powlashttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/December/whats-coming-in-2017-for-SAP-BusinessObjects-BI
Join Tammy Powlas for a live Q&amp;A session and learn about what the future holds for SAP BI solutions and how you can best new leverage BI tools.<br />Wed, 07 Dec 2016 05:00:00 GMTExplore Your SAP S/4HANA Implementation Optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/December/SAP-S4HANA-implementation-options
Join this special encore live Q&amp;A presentation for SAP professionals in the&nbsp; Asia/Pacific region. Ask your questions on how SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA) Value Assurance offerings can help your organization identify opportunities, plan for and execute value-driven business transformation and realize additional value from your SAP S/4HANA software implementation with SAP Digital Business Services and our partner ecosystem.Tue, 06 Dec 2016 05:00:00 GMTAutomate and Streamline Your SAP Payroll Processhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/November/automate-and-streamline-your-SAP-payroll-process
HR 2017 speaker Mike Timm answers questions on automating and streamlining your SAP payroll process. Get expert advice on adopting new functionality and configuring existing functionality.Wed, 16 Nov 2016 17:13:37 GMTExplore Your SAP S/4HANA Implementation Optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/November/explore-your-SAP-S4HANA-implementation-options
Live Q&A on how SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA) Value Assurance offerings can help your organization identify opportunities, plan for and execute value-driven business transformation and realize additional value from your SAP S/4HANA software implementation with SAP Digital Business Services and our partner ecosystem.Tue, 15 Nov 2016 05:00:00 GMTUsing SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Enhancements: What You Need to Know About the Latest Releasehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/October/using-SAP-solution-manager-7-2-enhancements
Join SAP's John Krakowski to learn about using SAP Solution Manager 7.2 to manage your next SAP project.&nbsp; John will answer your questions on upgrade best practices, important-to-know next steps after the implementation, utilizing the latest enhancements, and more.Wed, 26 Oct 2016 04:00:00 GMTWhat You Need to Know About Cloud Security for SAP Solutionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/October/what-you-need-to-know-about-cloud-security-for-SAP-solutions
Learn strategies and best practices for determining your cloud security requirements for your SAP solutions.Wed, 19 Oct 2016 04:00:00 GMTHow Will Digital Transformation Impact Your SAP Financials Processes?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/October/how-will-digital-transformation-impact-your-SAP-financials-processes
Attend this live Q&A session to get a global perspective on digitizing your SAP ERP and SAP HANA Financial processes. They will share strategic advice on how visionary companies optimize and automate finance processes to enable fast, accurate, and compliant financial decisions.Tue, 18 Oct 2016 04:00:00 GMTManaging the Journal Entry and Approval Process in Your SAP Systems: Live Q&A with Brian Shannonhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/October/managing-the-journal-entry-and-approval-process-in-your-SAP-systems
Get tips and best practices for creating automated, intelligent workflows to streamline the approval of complex journal entries, and improve controls. Ask your own questions on how to shorten the financial close and much more.Wed, 05 Oct 2016 04:00:00 GMTAdvancing Your Analytics for the Digital Age with SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, Premium Editionhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/QA-on-Advancing-Your-Analytics-for-the-Digital-Age-with-SAP-BusinessObjects-Enterprise
Join this live Q&amp;A to learn how the premium edition of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise can provide you with the analytics capabilities you need to succeed in the digital economy. You will find answers to pressing questions on how to best leverage SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise.Tue, 27 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTMaximize Supply Chain Transparency and Gain Control of Freight Spend with the Latest SAP TM Capabilitieshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/maximize-supply-chain-transparency-and-gain-control-of-freight-spend
Get answers to your most pressing questions on using the latest release of SAP TM, SAP Fiori tools, and SAP HANA together to drastically improve supply chain visibility, reduce freight costs, and meet customer service objectives.Thu, 22 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTWhat You Need to Know About the Information Design Tool in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2: Q&A with Michael Welter and Alan Mayerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/information-design-tool-in-SAP-BusinessObjects-BI-4-2
Join Reporting & Analytics Interactive 2016 speakers Michael Welter and Alan Mayer to learn about the features of the information design tool in the latest SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 release. Alan and Michael will answer questions on migrating your universes, the settings that will make the tool more user- friendly, and how get the most from the many new features available.Wed, 21 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTManaging the People Side of an SAP Project: Live Q&A with Doug Whittlehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/Doug-Whittle-on-managing-the-people-side-of-an-SAP-project
Join this live Q&amp;A with Managing Your SAP Projects 2016 speaker Doug Whittle to learn best practices for leading and managing others throughout your SAP project. Ask your most pressing questions about engaging stakeholders, kicking-off a project, and harnessing the different working styles within a team.Thu, 15 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTPrepare Your Landscape for the Migration to SAP S/4HANA Financehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/prepare-your-landscape-for-the-migration-to-SAP-S4HANA-Finance
Learn about the architecture considerations before making the move to better prepare your current SAP ERP system for the migration. Join Sonam Pawar, speaker at the upcoming SAP Financials 2016 conference in Singapore, for an interactive Q&amp;A session on how a migration to SAP S/4HANA Finance will impact your system landscape.Wed, 14 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTHow to Accelerate Your Transition to SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/September/IBM-deploying-SAP-S4HANA-in-the-Cloud
Experts share advice on specific actions you can take and best practices you can follow to successfully deploy SAP S/4HANA in the cloud.Tue, 13 Sep 2016 04:00:00 GMTLeveraging SAP BusinessObjects Lumira with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/August/QA-on-Leveraging-SAP-BusinessObjects-Lumira-with-SAP-BusinessObjects-BI-4-2
Attend this live Q&amp;A session to learn how you can meet these needs by leveraging SAP BusinessObjects Lumira with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) 4.2. We will also discuss the myriad functionalities SAP BusinessObjects Lumira provides.Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:00:00 GMTHow to Automate and Streamline the Financial Close Process in Your SAP Systemshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/August/how-to-automate-and-streamline-the-financial-close-process-in-your-SAP-systems
Join this Q&A to get tips and best practices for automating and streamlining the financial close process. This is your opportunity to ask questions specific to your SAP systems on balance sheet account reconciliations, high-volume transaction matching, manual journal entries, and data integration.Wed, 17 Aug 2016 04:00:00 GMTDiscovering the Newest Developments of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/August/QA-on-Discovering-the-Newest-Developments-of-SAP-BusinessObjects-Web-Intelligence-4-2
Join us for this live Q&amp;A session for answers to questions around the new innovations and enhancements to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2. We will also cover key new processes designed to save your organization time and effort when upgrading to version 4.2. Get answers to pressing questions on all the new features of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2.Thu, 11 Aug 2016 04:00:00 GMTHow to Ensure a Successful SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 Upgradehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/July/QA-on-how-to-ensure-a-successful-SAP-BusinessObjects-BI-4-2-upgrade
Join us for this live Q&A session to get answers to questions about all aspects of upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2, including the planning and technical considerations you’ll need to make before the move. We will also address key new migration processes designed to save your organization time and effort when making this change.Wed, 20 Jul 2016 04:00:00 GMTOptimize Asset Management with ECM for SAP Landscapeshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/June/QA-with-OpenText-on-ECM-and-asset-management
<p>Attend this live Q&amp;A session to get an international perspective with industry experts Nicholas Mauldin (AMER) and Claudia Traving (EMEA) of OpenText on how leading organizations are leveraging Enterprise Content Management (ECM) in their SAP landscapes to digitize key assets and processes, thereby providing fast access to documentation. </p>Thu, 02 Jun 2016 19:03:00 GMTOptimizing BI Administration in SAP Environments: Q&A on How to Properly Maintain and Secure Complex, Shared Landscapeshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/May/QA-with-Xoomworks-on-Optimizing-BI-Administration
Join this live chat with Marco Draghi, Principal Consultant at Xoomworks, and learn techniques for the optimal maintenance of SAP systems in a changing, complex BI environment.Tue, 24 May 2016 19:57:00 GMTEnhance and Simplify Your Data Warehousing with SAP BW 7.5: Live Q&A on the Newest Features and Functions of SAP BW Powered by SAP HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/May/QA-with-Dr-Berg-on-SAP-BW-7-5
<p>Attend this live Q&amp;A session to learn the new capabilities of the 7.5 edition of SAP BW powered by SAP HANA ask your questions about what features have been extended from earlier releases and how to leverage the latest release to improve productivity and performance.</p>Wed, 11 May 2016 18:52:08 GMTMake Sense of the CO Cost Settlement Process: Live Q&A on Navigating Cost Settlement in SAP Systemshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/May/QA-with-Rohana-Gunawardena-on-SAP-CO-settlement
<p>Attend this live Q&amp;A on Thursday, May 26 to hear from Financials 2016 speaker Rohana Gunawardena of Exium Inc. and get answers to your questions on the CO cost settlement process. Rohana will break down everything you need to know about cost settlement and how it works. </p>Wed, 11 May 2016 04:12:23 GMTQ&A on SAP BI 4.2: What's Happening with SAP's BI Products, and What Does It Mean for You?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/May/QA-with-APOS-and-SAP-on-SAP-BI
Attend this live Q&amp;A session with SAP's Jayne Landry and a number of other BI product leaders to learn about BI 4.2 and ask your question about SAP&rsquo;s BI products and how BI 4.2 can deliver on your needs.Wed, 04 May 2016 15:09:00 GMTMeet Demand-Driven Scheduling Requirements with SAP ERP and SAP APO: Q&A on When to Use Which for Enhanced Supply and Production Planninghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/May/QA-with-Matthew-Campbell-on-SAP-ERP-and-SAP-APO
Join this live Q&amp;A with Logistics and SCM, Manufacturing, Procurement, and PLM 2016 speaker Matthew Campbell to learn how &mdash; and when &mdash; to use SAP ERP and the PP/DS and SNP components of SAP APO to satisfy your organization&rsquo;s demand-driven supply chain scheduling requirements.Wed, 04 May 2016 04:23:02 GMTSAP Integrated Business Planning for Sales and Operations: Q&A on How to Optimize Demand and Supply Planning and Increase Profitabilityhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/April/QA-with-Christian-Guldager-on-SAP-Integrated-Planning
Learn how SAP Integrated Business Planning for sales and operations, running on the SAP HANA platform, can help you optimize your demand and supply planning by connecting processes, people/mindset, and IT.Wed, 20 Apr 2016 16:31:53 GMTHow to Protect Your Data from Today's Biggest Cybersecurity Threats: Q&A on Managing Security in Your SAP Landscapehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/April/QA-with-Julie-Ford-on-protecting-SAP-data-from-cyber-threats
GRC 2016 speaker Julie Ford of Customer Advisory Group, an expert with more than 13 years of experience as an architect in SAP security, answers questions on how to stay ahead of hackers and protect your critical SAP data.Thu, 14 Apr 2016 17:23:00 GMTQ&A on Personnel Administration Configuration and Best Practices for Global SAP ERP HCM Implementationshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/April/QA-with-Sven-Ringling-on-global-personnel-administration
<p>HR 2016 speaker Sven Ringling answers readers' questions about SAP ERP HCM implementations and designing personnel structures in a global enterprise.</p>Mon, 04 Apr 2016 20:46:59 GMTWhat's New in SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.6? Q&A on New Features, Deployment Options, Use Cases, and Morehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/March/QA-with-Interdobs-on-SAP-Design-Studio
SAP BI experts Jeroen van der A and Xavier Hacking of Interdobs answer readers' questions on new capabilities and key features of SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.6, the different deployment options, mobile capabilities, and more.Thu, 31 Mar 2016 18:51:00 GMTLive Q&A: How to simplify your SAP landscape with new ECM solution optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/March/QA-with-Dolphin-on-content-management
<p>With SAP HANA and the cloud widening the scope of opportunities, it&rsquo;s an optimal time for companies to consider a modern approach to content management. During this live Q&amp;A, Dolphin President and CEO Dr. Werner Hopf and Vishal Awasthi, Chief Technology Officer at Dolphin, answered questions on how a service-based content management solution can enable your company to keep unstructured data where you live &mdash; in your SAP system.</p>Wed, 23 Mar 2016 04:00:00 GMTTurn IoT Device Data into Actionable Intelligence: How to Harness Information for Use in Your Data-Driven Businesshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/March/QA-with-Red-Hat-on-turing-IoT-device-data-into-actionable-insight
During this live Q&amp;A, Red Hat&rsquo;s Prasanna Sivaramakrishnan and Sid Sipes of SAP took readers' questions on how to harness big data and leverage edge computing to get real-time insights that lead to quicker decision making. Check out the chat replay to find out more about security, data transformation, and device connectivity.Tue, 15 Mar 2016 18:55:00 GMTSales Order Processing and SAP ERP: Q&A on How to Accelerate Sales Cycles with an Automated Systemhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/March/QA-with-Esker-on-sales-order-processing
<p>Howie Hahn of Esker fielded questions on sales order automation. Learn best practices for automating your current processes, integrating data with your SAP ERP systems, migrating to the cloud, and more.&nbsp; </p>Thu, 10 Mar 2016 23:00:57 GMTNext-generation inventory management: Q&A on optimizing inventory levels while improving customer servicehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/March/QA-with-Tom-Chason-on-inventory-management
In this Q&amp;A, Logistics and SCM, Manufacturing, Procurement, and PLM 2016 speaker Tom Chason answers questions on how to use SAP APO, SAP Enterprise Inventory and Service-Level Optimization, and SmartOps solutions together to optimize inventory levels and processes, reduce data volumes, and meet customer service objectives.Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:18:00 GMTHow to Design a Successful SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x platform: Q&A on Security and Authenticationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/February/QA-with-Xoomworks-on-security-in-SAP-BI
<p>In this live Q&amp;A, Martin Macmaster, Principal Consultant at Xoomworks, answers questions on how to set up and manage authentications and best practices for user login issues. Check out the chat replay to learn about the different security models supported by SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x and how to design the best platform for your business. </p>Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:50:00 GMTGain Control of Your IT Environment: Q&A on Navigating the Controlling Options of Your SAP Systemhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/February/QA-with-Rohaha-Gunawardena-on-SAP-controlling-options
Financials 2016 speaker Rohana Gunawardena answers questions on how to choose the most optimal SAP CO environment to meet your organization&rsquo;s needs.Thu, 11 Feb 2016 15:59:00 GMTControl Compliance and Business Risk with Streamlined Role Maintenance: Q&A on BRM Functionality and Configurationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/February/QA-with-James-Roeske-on-streamlined-business-role-maintenance
In this live Q&amp;A with GRC 2016 speaker James Roeske, learn how BRM helps you manage access across your entire SAP system landscape, and how it enables control over compliance and business risk.Wed, 10 Feb 2016 21:16:24 GMTSimplify Business Processes in SAP ERP with Optimized UX: Q&A on How a Mobile-Enabled User Experience Streamlines Processes and Boosts Productivityhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/January/QA-with-CNBS-on-Optimized-UX-in-SAP-ERP
View the live Q&amp;A chat replay to learn how to shift your focus from what a process accomplishes in SAP ERP to what the user experiences while doing the work. Discover how to boost the productivity of your workforce and improve decision making with a simpler, mobile-enabled process, and get answers to your most-pressing questions.<br />Wed, 27 Jan 2016 20:45:00 GMTBring Real-Time Analytics and Reporting into Your SAP HANA Platform: Q&A on the Benefits of Agile Data Martshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/January/QA-with-SAP-HANA-platform-on-agile-data-marts
An agile BI approach can reduce the time it takes for traditional BI to deliver value to an organization and also helps to quickly adapt to changing business needs. Discover the benefits of agile BI and learn how to incorporate an agile data mart directly into your SAP HANA platform to meet your organization&rsquo;s specific data and analytics needs.Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:07:00 GMTBest Practices for an Effective Migration to SAP BusinessObjects Design Studiohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2016/January/QA-with-Ingo-Hilgefort-on-SAP-Design-Studio
Check out the chat replay from this live Q&amp;A event to learn more about SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, discuss the differences between this platform and its predecessor, and discover how best to migrate from SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards to avoid complications.Tue, 19 Jan 2016 21:25:00 GMTTake the Complexity and Risks Out of Intercompany Transactions: Q&A on How to Ensure Data Integrity and Increase Productivityhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/December/QA-with-BlackLine-on-intercompany-transactions
BlackLine&rsquo;s Susan Parcells, Director of Finance Transformation, and Susan Hols, Principal Solutions Consultant, take questions on how to address the complexity of intercompany transactions to ensure data integrity and improve productivity.Thu, 17 Dec 2015 03:36:00 GMTBest Practices for Evaluating Your SAP Landscape for a Successful SAP S/4HANA Transformationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/December/QA-with-HPE-on-evaluating-SAP-landscape-for-migration-to-S4HANA
<p>It&rsquo;s no secret that organizations that don&rsquo;t embrace the digital enterprise will fall behind their competitors. SAP S/4HANA is designed to help SAP customers down the digital transformation path, but how can companies best navigate that road for a successful migration? </p>Tue, 15 Dec 2015 17:27:00 GMTOptimize and Automate Your Configure-Price-Quote Processes in the Cloud: Live Q&A on Extending your SAP CRM and ERP Investmentshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/November/QA-with-FPX-on-moving-CRM-to-the-cloud
FPX CEO Dave Batt answers questions on how to enhance and extend your SAP CRM and ERP investment by implementing a single Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) application in the cloud to optimize and automate all Quote-to-Order and Renewal Management business processes.Thu, 12 Nov 2015 05:00:00 GMTSimplify B2B transactions in SAP ERP: Q&A on integration, user experience, payment processing, and morehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/November/QA-with-CNBS-on-ecommerce
<p>How can you meet the changing user experience expectations of your enterprise buyers without adding complexity? What are your options for bringing a B2C look and feel to B2B sales transactions when you are running SAP ERP?</p>Tue, 10 Nov 2015 05:00:00 GMTHow to Secure the Success of Your Journey to SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/November/QA-with-SAP-on-S4HANA-service-and-support
<p>Learn how SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA) can help your organization dissolve boundaries, realign existing processes, and create a structured framework for innovation. </p>Fri, 06 Nov 2015 15:33:56 GMTWhat to Expect with SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.x: Q&A on Handling Change in Your WebI Migrationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/October/QA-with-Alan-Mayer-on-WebI
Join our live Q&amp;A with Alan Mayer of Solid Ground Technologies on Thursday, October 29, to get your questions answered on all things WebI.Thu, 29 Oct 2015 04:00:00 GMTPrepare for SAP Solution Manager 7.2: Q&A with SAP's John Krakowski on the new releasehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/October/QA-with-John-Krakowski-on-SAP-Solution-Manager
<p>John Krakowski of SAP answers readers' questions about how best to prepare for SAP Solution Manager 7.2, which is planned for a 2016 release and will include new highlights such as adoption of SAP HANA and an improved user experience.</p>Tue, 27 Oct 2015 04:00:00 GMTQ&A on SAP Instance Consolidation Strategies to Accelerate Business Valuehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/October/QA-with-HCL-on-instance-consolidation-strategies
<p>Significant cost reduction opportunities are associated with instance consolidation. Studies show that the average operational cost of running a single SAP instance could be up to 30% lower than running multiple instances. </p>Thu, 22 Oct 2015 04:00:00 GMTBuilding a Successful SAP Archiving and Data Volume Management Strategy for the Age of Big Data and SAP HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/October/QA-with-Dolphin-on-data-management
Data volume management and data archiving may seem like simple enough concepts, but putting these concepts into practice can be tricky. Starting with a smart data volume management strategy built from a clear understanding of both the business needs and the value of the data will ensure data is stored and managed efficiently and cost-effectively. How do you formulate the best approach for using SAP technology to store your company&rsquo;s important documents and protect proprietary information?Thu, 15 Oct 2015 04:00:00 GMTPowering the Digital Transformation with SAP S/4HANA: A Q&A on Why SAP S/4HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/September/QA-with-IBM-on-S4HANA
<p>The digital transformation is picking up speed and driving enterprises to take a look at every area of their business. Since SAP announced SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA), its next-generation &nbsp;business suite, earlier this year, companies around the globe have been asking how a transformed ERP can help them innovate and drive business value. </p>Wed, 30 Sep 2015 04:00:00 GMTLeverage Your Current IT Infrastructure in SAP HANA Deployments: A Q&A on SAP Tailored Datacenter Integration Optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/September/QA-with-EMC-on-datacenter-integration
There is more than one way to deploy SAP HANA. &nbsp;As an alternative to implementing a fully pre-configured SAP HANA appliance, SAP also supports a Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) model to run SAP HANA with your current hardware and infrastructure components. What are your options, and how &ndash; and why &ndash; would you leverage your current IT systems with SAP HANA?Tue, 22 Sep 2015 04:00:00 GMTHow Enhanced User Experience Is Changing Core HR: Q&A on HR Renewal 2.0 and SAP Fiori for ESS/MSS, Payroll, and Roles in SAP ERP HCMhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/August/QA-with-Jacob-Crane-on-HR-renewal-self-services
With SAPUI5 and the updated look and feel employed by HR Renewal 2.0 as well as SAP Fiori, what is the impact on core SAP ERP HCM processes, from self-services to payroll? &nbsp;SAPinsider conference speaker Jacob Crane takes readers&rsquo; questions on the impact of HR Renewal and putting it to use in your organization.Wed, 12 Aug 2015 04:00:00 GMTKnow Your HR Integration Options: Q&A with Venki Krishnamoorthy and Vishnu Kandi on SuccessFactors and Your On-Premise Systemshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/August/QA-with-Krishnamoorthy-and-Kandi-on-HR-SuccessFactors-integration
<p>When considering moving some &ndash; or all &ndash; of your HR operations to the cloud, what are the key steps for surefire integration between SuccessFactors and your on-premise solutions? &nbsp;HCM experts Venki Krishnamoorthy and Vishnu Kandi take readers&rsquo; questions on deployment models and delivered integration with SuccessFactors talent solutions and Employee Central. Learn more about the tools and best practices for integrating SAP cloud HR solutions with your on-premise ERP and HCM systems.</p>Thu, 06 Aug 2015 04:00:00 GMTThe Latest on SAP Supply Chain Execution Solutions for Transportation and Warehouse Logisticshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/July/QA-with-Dominik-Metzger-supply-chain-execution
What is the latest on SAP solutions for supply chain execution with release 9.2? What is the practical impact on how your business can manage and streamline shipping, logistics and warehouse management. SCM 2015 Singapore speaker Dominik Metzger takes readers&rsquo; questions on key functionality of SAP Transportation Management, SAP EWM, and SAP Event Management.<br />Thu, 30 Jul 2015 04:00:00 GMTWhat's New with Advanced Mapping and Geolocation Intelligence in SAP BI Reporting? Q&A with Dr. Berg on Changes in WebI and Design Studiohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/July/QA-with-Dr-Berg-on-geomapping-with-SAP-BI
What is the latest on location intelligence, geospatial integration, and visualization technologies for SAP Design Studio and Web Intelligence? Dr. Bjarne Berg, Brandon Lucaciu, and Rob Frye of Comerit take readers' questions in this SAPinsider chat.Wed, 29 Jul 2015 04:00:00 GMTWhere Does SAP Lumira Fit into Your BI Toolset? Q&A with SAP Mentors Joshua Fletcher & Clint Vosloohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/July/QA-with-Fletcher-Vosloo-on-SAP-Lumira
What is the latest on plans and enhancements for Lumira, what has changed with release 1.27, and how can you use Lumira with other tools in the BI toolset?&nbsp; SAP Mentors and BI 2015 speakers Clint Vosloo and Joshua Fletcher take readers' questions on SAP Lumira in this SAPinsider chat.Wed, 15 Jul 2015 04:00:00 GMTComparing SAP BW on HANA vs. Native Reporting with SAP HANA: Q&A on Design, Optimization, and Troubleshootinghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/June/QA-with-Dmitry-Shustov-BW-and-HANA-reporting
<p>What are the differences when running SAP BW on SAP HANA vs. HANA native reporting? How does SAP HANA change reporting solution architecture? SAP BW and HANA expert Dmitry Shustov of Xoomworks takes readers' questions on optimizing reporting, whether running SAP BW on HANA and using HANA's native reporting.</p>Thu, 25 Jun 2015 04:00:00 GMTManaging Open Invoices and AR with SAP Systems: Q&A on Best Practices for Compliant, Secure, and Streamlined Payments Processinghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/June/QA-with-Schlechter-Rossi-on-invoice-payment-processing-for-SAP
<p style="text-align: left;">What visibility do your AR teams, employees, and customers have into open invoices in your SAP systems? Is your payment processing up-to-date, secure, and PCI compliant? In this online chat, CNBS Software&rsquo;s Gerald Schlechter and Jennifer Rossi of Paymetric take readers' questions on best practices for customer invoice processes in alignment with SAP data and systems.</p>Wed, 24 Jun 2015 04:00:00 GMTHow Does SAP Design Studio Change Dashboard Design and Performance? Q&A on What's New in Release 1.5http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/June/QA-with-van-der-A-and-Hacking-on-SAP-Design-Studio-1dot5
How does SAP Design Studio fit your dashboarding needs? What is changing in the latest release, 1.5, and what is the impact of the new release on performance and integration? BI experts Jeroen van der A and Xavier Hacking take readers' Design Studio questions in this online chat.<br />Wed, 10 Jun 2015 04:00:00 GMTCloud Lessons Learned for SAP Applications and SAP HANA: Q&A on Evaluating Cloud Cost Savings, Speed, and Performancehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/May/QA-with-Burke-Gallego-Cloud-Lessons-Learned
Moving to the cloud has shown SAP customers significant, measurable gains in processing speed, scalability, and visibility into their business processes. IBM&rsquo;s Chuck Kichler and Susan Wallace take readers' technical questions on evaluating possible cloud impacts and benefits for current and future SAP environments, and clarify your options for cloud architecture and services.Thu, 28 May 2015 04:00:00 GMTOptimizing SAP Tools for Supply Chain Analytics: <br>Q&A with SCM&nbsp;2015 Speakers Tom&nbsp;Chason and Alan&nbsp;Hendryhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/May/QA-with-Chason-Hendry-SCM-Analytics
What SAP tools are available to support a forward-looking supply chain analytics strategy? Supply chain experts&nbsp; and SCM 2015 speakers Tom Chason and Alan Hendry take readers' questions on supply chain analytics for SAP systems.Thu, 14 May 2015 04:00:00 GMTQuickly Move Your SAP BW System to SAP HANA Using the Database Migration Option Tool: Q&A with Dr. Berghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/April/QA-with-Bjarne-Berg-on-BW-Migration-to-SAP-HANA-with-DMO
<em>BI Expert</em> author Dr. Bjarne Berg along with his COMERIT colleagues Rob Frye, Jesper Christensen, and Joe Darlak take readers' questions on BW database migration to SAP HANA using the DMO migration tool. <br />Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:00:00 GMTFI-CO Tuneups and Pitfalls: Q&A with Rohana Gunawardena on New SAP Functionality for Optimizing Financehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/April/QA-with-Rohana-Gunawardena-on-FI-CO-Updates
What are your first steps to tune and optimize your current Financial Accounting and Controlling processes and data? How will SAP ERP enhancement package 7 impact your FI processes? Financials 2015 speaker Rohana Gunawardena takes readers' questions on fine tuning and updating your FI and CO processes.Wed, 29 Apr 2015 04:00:00 GMTWill Your Web Intelligence Journey Lead You into Lumira? Q&A with SAP's Ty Miller & Frank Prabelhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/April/QA-with-Ty-Miller-and-Frank-Prabel-on-SAP-Lumira-and-Web-Intelligence
SAP's Ty Miller, Frank Prabel, and colleagues take readers' questions on the latest capabilities for SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and SAP Lumira, and share insights about the product direction for the upcoming versions and beyond.Wed, 22 Apr 2015 04:00:00 GMTManaging Your SAP Systems in Latin America: Q&A on the Latest E-Invoicing Mandates, Reducing Risk, and Lowering Costshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/April/QA-with-Steve-Sprague-on-Latin-American-emandates
Join this Q&amp;A on April 16 on Latin American e-mandates, with updates from expert Steve Sprague on the latest regulations, specific local mandates, and coming changes, and how they impact your SAP infrastructure, finance, reporting, and operational workflow.&nbsp; &nbsp;Thu, 16 Apr 2015 04:00:00 GMTThe Internet of Things: How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everythinghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/April/QA-with-Saj-Kumar-and-Jerry-Lucas-on-Internet-of-Things
In this online Q&amp;A, IoT thought leaders Saj Kumar of SAP and Jerry Lucas of Cisco take readers' strategic and technical questions about IoT&rsquo;s impact on your current processes; the planning, skills, and technical requirements to implement and manage IoT applications and data; and how Cisco and SAP are working together to provide IoT solutions.Fri, 10 Apr 2015 04:00:00 GMTReporting on SAP BW without BEx: Q&A on SAP BusinessObjects Analysis and WebI Best Practices and Capabilitieshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/March/QA-with-Tom-Kornfeld-on-WebI-and-Analysis-for-BW-Reporting
What is the case for migrating away from SAP Business Explorer, and how does BEx compare to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence or the Analysis tools? BusinessObjects expert Tom Kornfeld takes readers&rsquo; questions on replacing BEx and scenarios for using WebI, Analysis for OLAP and Analysis for Microsoft Office.Thu, 26 Mar 2015 04:13:00 GMTChoosing the Optimal Forecasting Method to Minimize Planning Errors: Q&A on SAP APO DP Model Selection Toolshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/March/QA-with-Alistair-Thornton-on-Forecast-Methods-and-SAP-APO-DP
SCM 2015 speaker Alistair Thornton takes readers&rsquo; questions on improving forecast accuracy with the right models using SAP APO demand planning tools for model analysis and selection.Thu, 05 Mar 2015 05:58:00 GMTThe Latest on Moving to SAP GRC 10.x: Q&A with James Roeskehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/February/QA-with-James-Roeske-on-SAP-GRC-10x
How has SAP GRC offering changed with the 10.0 and 10.1 releases, and what are the biggest differentiators between the two?&nbsp; GRC 2015 speaker and compliance expert James Roeske takes readers' questions in an online Q&amp;A on&nbsp; Access Control 10.x.Thu, 19 Feb 2015 05:00:00 GMTIntroduction to SuccessFactors Position Management: Q&A on Optimizing Your Org Structure in Employee Centralhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/February/QA-with-Jyoti-Sharma-and-Kevin-Chan-SuccessFactors-Position-Management
Traditional employee-based org structures can face roadblocks when handling job sharing, vacancies, or budgeting and planning for roles that do not yet exist. How does the Position Management feature in SuccessFactors Employee Central help you sidestep these pitfalls, and how do you implement and design it to meet your specific business needs? Jyoti Sharma and Kevin Chan take readers' questions in this online Q&amp;A on Position Management.Tue, 17 Feb 2015 05:00:00 GMTVirtualization for SAP HANA and SAP Systems: Q&A with Kurt Hollishttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/February/QA-with-Kurt-Hollis-on-virtualization-with-SAP-systems-and-HANA
Why move your SAP systems to a virtualized environment? What are your options for virtualization with SAP HANA? Consultant Kurt Hollis takes readers&rsquo; questions on virtualizing SAP systems, announcements of SAP HANA support for virtualization, tools to maximize resources, and best practices for high availability and disaster recovery in a virtualized environment.Thu, 12 Feb 2015 05:00:00 GMTChanging UIs for SAP ERP HCM: Q&A on the Latest Enhancements for ESS/MSS with HR Renewalhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/February/QA-with-Jeremy-Masters-on-HR-Renewal-HCM-self-services
With SAP's new HR Renewal offering, what are the latest enhancements for on-premise SAP HR self-services? &nbsp;HR 2015 speaker Jeremy Masters takes readers&rsquo; questions on navigation, look-and-feel, personalization, security and other elements of the HR Renewal-based UI in this one-hour online Q&amp;A.&nbsp;Wed, 11 Feb 2015 05:00:00 GMTWhat Converged Infrastructures Mean for Your SAP Landscape: Q&A on Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) and SAP HANA Deployment Optionshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/February/QA-on-SAP-HANA-TDI-and-converged-infrastructure-options
<p>When embarking on an SAP HANA deployment, where are the opportunities for a more integrated, efficient approach to datacenter management across your SAP systems? Can converged infrastructure and SAP HANA TDI approach simplify management and scalability of your landscape? Konrad Lang, Robert Madl, and Michiel Bijlsma take reader questions on TDI and share tips based on SAP customers&rsquo; experiences with Cisco&rsquo;s Unified Computing System (UCS). </p> <br />Wed, 04 Feb 2015 05:00:00 GMTKnow Your BI Upgrade & Integration Options: Q&A with SAP on BusinessObjects BI 4.1 Migration, Interoperability, and Compatibilityhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/January/QA-on-SAP-BI-41-Integration-and-Interoperability
What key native integration comes with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 tools and technology? What is the latest on system compatibility? SAP&rsquo;s Sathish Rajagopal, Harjeet Judge, and Maheshwar Singh take&nbsp; reader questions on 4.1 in a live Q&amp;A.Thu, 29 Jan 2015 05:00:00 GMTOptimizing Forecast Consumption in SAP APO: Q&A with SCM 2015 Speaker Sean Mawhorterhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/January/QA-with-Sean-Mawhorter-on-SAP-APO-forecast-consumption
What do you need to know about the forecast consumption process and tools in SAP APO? In this live Q&amp;A, SCM 2015 speaker Sean Mawhorter takes readers&rsquo; questions on fine-tuning forecast consumption settings and optimizing DP and SNP integration for more accurate demand and supply planning.Thu, 22 Jan 2015 05:00:00 GMTFrom BEx to What's Next: Q&A with Tammy Powlas on Moving from SAP Business Explorer to the Latest BI Toolshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2015/January/QA-with-Tammy-Powlas-on-Tools-for-BEx-Customers
SAP Business Explorer tools are now in maintenance mode, but what does that mean for your current and future BEx queries? Can BEx Analyzer coexist with tools like Design Studio or Analysis? SAP Mentor and BI 2015 speaker Tammy Powlas takes reader questions in this live Q&amp;A on transitioning from BEx to BI tools including Design Studio, Analysis and Lumira.Thu, 15 Jan 2015 05:00:00 GMTWhat Has Changed in SAP Access Control? Q&A with Author Gary Prewett on Troubleshooting, Customizing, and Reporting in AC 10.xhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-with-Gary-Prewett-on-SAP-Access-Control-10x
How has SAP Access Control changed in the latest 10.x versions? What does this mean for your current access management and monitoring processes? <em>SAP Professional Journal</em> author Gary Prewett takes readers&rsquo; questions on AC 10.x in this online Q&amp;A.Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTThe Hows and Whys of Moving to SAP HANA: Q&A on Technical Tips for a Smooth Migrationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-on-SAP-HANA-migration-technical-tips-and-lessons-learned
<p>As a follow up to their webinar "Stay Calm and Move to SAP HANA", HP&rsquo;s Anita Paul and Amit Chakravarti take questions from readers in this online Q&amp;A on the key technical issues &ndash; from deployment options to impact on current code &ndash; when planning an SAP HANA migration.</p>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTOptimizing Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable in SAP: Q&A on Designing Solutions for Evolving Near-Cash Workflowshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-with-Brian-Shannon-on-AR-and-AP-Optimization
What changes to your Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable workflow can improve control of cash flow? Financials 2014 speaker Brian Shannon takes readers&rsquo; questions on OCR and other automated capture technologies, document storage and tips on designing solutions to optimizing near-cash AR and AP processes in this online Q&amp;A.Thu, 11 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTWhat to Really Expect from SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA: Q&A with Juan Carlos Martinez-Gilhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-on-what-to-expect-from-SAP-Business-Suite-on-HANA
Moving to SAP Business Suite to SAP HANA comes with high expectations for faster runtime and process improvements - and it's far more than simply a technical migration. What practical steps can you take to achieve short-term benefits, sidestep common pitfalls, and plan for long-term business innovation resulting from a move to Suite on HANA? Capgemini&rsquo;s Juan Carlos Martinez-Gil takes reader questions in this online Q&amp;A.Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTAlign Sales and Finance in Your SAP Systems: Q&A on Lead-to-Cash Integration to Shorten the Sales Cycle and Drive Revenuehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-on-Lead-to-Cash-Sales-and-Finance-Integration-in-SAP
<p>Lead-to-cash integration aligns your sales processes &ndash; including quotes, discounting, and contracts &ndash; with SAP back-office financial accounting to drive revenue generation and shorter sales cycles.&nbsp; Chris Lords and Dana Henriksen of FPX take readers&rsquo; lead-to-cash questions in this online Q&amp;A.</p>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTSetting a Strategy for Your SAP HANA Investment: <br>Q&A with Anita Paul and Amit Chakravartihttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/December/QA-on-Setting-Strategy-for-SAP-HANA-Investment
When you take the first steps toward SAP HANA implementation, what are strategies to minimize risk and invest in the targeted innovations for your business needs?&nbsp; HP&rsquo;s Anita Paul and Amit Chakravarti take readers&rsquo; questions on key decision points in a move to SAP HANA.Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:00:00 GMTWhat's Slowing Down Your BI Reports? Q&A on End-to-End Analysis of SAP BusinessObjects BI Performance with Johann Kottashttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/November/QA-with-Johann-Kottas-on-BI-Reporting-Performance
What are the first steps to diagnosing slow response times in your BI reports and dashboards? Is the source&nbsp; of the slowdown in the content design, server resources, or configuration? BI expert Johann Kottas takes questions on analyzing SAP BusinessObjects BI response times at each processing layer in this live Q&amp;A.Tue, 25 Nov 2014 05:00:00 GMTMoving to SuccessFactors Employee Central: Q&A with SAP Mentor Luke Marsonhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/November/QA-with-Luke-Marson-on-Employee-Central
What are the biggest integration, data, functional, and implementation considerations when evaluating a move to Employee Central? &nbsp;SAP Mentor and HR Expert author Luke Marson takes readers&rsquo; questions on SuccessFactors Employee Central in a live Q&amp;A.Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:00:00 GMTStreamline Year-End Payroll and Processes: Q&A with SAP Payroll Expert Mike Timmhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/November/QA-with-Mike-Timm-on-Year-End-SAP-Payroll
Get ready for end-of-year payroll and ask your questions about improving your SAP payroll processes in this live chat with expert Mike Timm.Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:00:00 GMTWhat Is the SAP Design Studio SDK and Why Use It? Q&A with Dr. Berg on Streamlining Dashboard Creation with Design Studiohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/October/QA-with-Dr-Berg-on-SAP-Design-Studio-SDK
<p>Whether you are working in SAP Design Studio now or considering a move to Design Studio, what do you need to know about the SDK? When is it the right tool for building custom Design Studio applications? Dr. Bjarne Berg and his colleagues take readers&rsquo; questions on Design Studio SDK in a live Q&amp;A. </p>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 04:00:00 GMTMeet Changing Requirements for Financial Reporting: Q&A with Peter Jones on Best Practices for FI/CO, BW, and SAP BPChttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/October/QA-with-Peter-Jones-on-Financial-Reporting
Financial reporting needs are changing, as the business looks for more plan and forecasting data, dynamic reporting, and greater accessibility. Consultant and<em> SAP Experts</em> advisor Peter Jones takes readers&rsquo; questions on improving reporting with SAP solutions and tools, including FI/CO, SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BPC 10.1.Wed, 15 Oct 2014 04:00:00 GMTThe Latest on BI Innovations from SAP: Q&A with Nic Smith and Venkatesh Vaidyanathan on SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/October/QA-with-Smith-and-Vaidyanathan-on-SAP-BI-41
What are the key integration points built in to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1, and what will they mean in practical terms for your current BI and SAP technology investments? SAP&rsquo;s Nic Smith and Venkatesh Vaidyanathan take reader questions on BI 4.1 integration options in a live Q&amp;A.Wed, 08 Oct 2014 16:30:00 GMTWhat's Changed with SAP Solution Manager 7.1: Q&A with Vivek Banerjee on Key Updates for Configuration and Monitoring in 7.1http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/October/QA-with-Vivek-Banerjee-on-SAP-Solution-Manager
<p>How has the 7.1 release changed SAP Solution Manager functionality &ndash; from solution documentation framework to change management? Vivek Banerjee takes reader questions on 7.1 features and the SAP Solution Manager 7.1 tools to better manage, test, and document your SAP systems for both process and business teams.</p>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:30:00 GMTWhat's Ahead for SAP Payroll Solutions & Processes? Q&A with SAP Experts Advisor Steve Bognerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/September/QA-with-Steve-Bogner-on-SAP-Payroll
With all the changes coming to HR solutions for SAP customers, what will the impact be on SAP Payroll? HR Experts advisor and HCM expert Steve Bogner takes reader questions on SAP Payroll and shares technical tips on payroll processes in this Q&amp;A.Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:00:00 GMTMoving to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation: Technical Tips and Advice on SAP BPC 10.0/10.1 Migration and Implementationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/September/QA-on-SAP-BPC-101-implementation-and-migration
What changes in a move from legacy, Excel-based budgeting and planning to an integrated SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) platform? How does the 10.1 BPC release differ from 10.0? Puneet Gupta, Kranthi Kumar and Sanjeev Mehta take readers&rsquo; SAP BPC questions on preparing for implementation.&nbsp;Thu, 18 Sep 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhat's Next for SAP Transportation Management? Q&A on the Latest SAP TM - SAP EWM Integration Options with Dominik Metzgerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/September/QA-with-Dominik-Metzger-on-SAP-TM-and-EWM-integration
How will new integration options change your current SAP Transportation Management and SAP Extended Warehouse Management capabilities? What are the master data and system requirements for a successful SAP TM and SAP EWM integration project? SCM 2014 speaker Dominik Metzger takes readers&rsquo; questions in this live chat on TM and EWM integration to streamline logistics and supply chain execution.Tue, 09 Sep 2014 04:00:00 GMTPlanning for Talent Management with SuccessFactors: Q&A with Amy Grubbhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/August/QA-with-Amy-Grubb-on-Talent-Management-with-SuccessFactors
How do you plan and successfully move your Talent Management processes to the cloud with SuccessFactors? HR Expert advisor Amy Grubb takes reader questions on avoiding implementation pitfalls, what to expect in the transition from on-premise talent processes, and other Talent Management integration questions in this live online Q&amp;A.<br />Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhat SAP Lumira Means for BI Data: Q&A with Dr. Berg on SAP HANA, Mobility & Data Integration with Self-Service Visualizationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/August/QA-with-Dr-Berg-on-SAP-Lumira
<p>SAP Lumira is designed for your power users, but what about all that data flowing in and out of any of these modern, self-service visualizations? &nbsp;How does Lumira support shared data sets, integration with SAP BI tools and SAP HANA, mobile deployment and data collection? Dr. Bjarne Berg and colleagues take readers&rsquo; questions on the next steps and new tools for SAP Lumira.</p> <p>Dive deeper into SAP Lumira with guidance from <a href="http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/BI/Search?q=lumira&amp;utm_source=sapinsider&amp;utm_medium=lpoct&amp;utm_content=lumiraq%2526a&amp;utm_campaign=octobercta" target="_blank">BI Expert</a>.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>Thu, 21 Aug 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhat's the Latest on Packaged Integrations & Deployment Models for SAP ERP HCM & SuccessFactors? Q&A with SAP's Prashanth Padmanabhanhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/August/QA-with-Prashanth-Padmanabhan-packaged-integrations-SuccessFactors-SAP-ERP-HCM
<p>In this Q&amp;A coinciding with the SuccessFactors August release, SAP&rsquo;s Prashanth Padmanabhan takes readers&rsquo; questions on new packaged integrations, &nbsp;support for &ldquo;hybrid&rdquo; vs. &ldquo;side-by-side&rdquo; deployment models for SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors integration, along with a look ahead to plans for the November release and the broader integration roadmap.</p>Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhere Does ABAP Fit into a Changing SAP Landscape? Q&A with SAP Mentor James Woodhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/August/QA-with-James-Wood-on-ABAP-and-the-changing-SAP-landscape
<p>SAP HANA, SAP UI5, Fiori, the cloud, and mobile devices are also shaping application development and developers&rsquo; tools and skills. So what does this mean for the future of ABAP and the next generation of applications? <em>SAP Professional Journal</em> author and SAP Mentor James Wood takes reader questions on what&rsquo;s next for developers in a changing SAP landscape. &nbsp;</p>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 04:00:00 GMTWebI, Lumira, Design Studio… What's Next? Q&A on BI Tools Selection with SAP Mentors Joshua Fletcher and Clint Vosloohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/August/QA-with-Fletcher-and-Vosloo-on-BI-tools-selection
<p>With the introduction of SAP Design Studio and Lumira, what&rsquo;s next for your dashboard and BI reporting, and your current dashboard development work with tools like SAP Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius), Webi or Business Explorer? SAP Mentors Joshua Fletcher and Clint Vosloo take readers&rsquo; questions in this online Q&amp;A.&nbsp;</p>Thu, 07 Aug 2014 04:00:00 GMTHow Are HR Renewal and SAP Fiori Changing SAP HCM Employee & Manager Self-Services? Q&A with Jeremy Mastershttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/July/QA-with-Jeremy-Masters-on-HR-Renewal-Fiori-and-ESS-MSS
<p>How are SAP Fiori and HR Renewal changing the SAP ERP HCM user experience, and what does this mean for ESS, MSS and HR Professional self-services? HR expert and speaker&nbsp;Jeremy Masters takes reader questions on leveraging&nbsp;HR Renewal and SAP Fiori for self-services in this online Q&amp;A.</p>Thu, 17 Jul 2014 04:00:00 GMTIntegrating Paper, Email & EDI into Your SAP Workflows: Q&A on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for SAP Systemshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/July/QA-with-Chrystal-Legan-on-Enterprise-Content-Management-ECM-for-SAP-systems
<p>Optimizing and integrating paper, email and EDI content into your business processes is the role of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy.&nbsp; How can ECM meet document management requirements as well as data automation, compliance and disaster recovery needs? Chrystal Legan of OnBase by Hyland takes reader questions on ECM basics, technical integration and business scenarios, and how SAP customers apply ECM for cost savings and productivity gains.&nbsp;</p>Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:00:00 GMTAdopting a Modern, Unified Workplace with Microsoft and SAP Solutions: Q&A with Markus Dopp and Markus von Aschoffhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/June/QA-with-Dopp-and-von-Aschoff-on-unified-workplace-for-Microsoft-and-SAP
What steps can you take across your systems &ndash; including SAP ERP, Microsoft SharePoint, O365, and mobile &ndash; to offer a unified experience regardless of the system or environment in which they work? In this online Q&amp;A, readers ask their questions&nbsp; bringing together SAP and Microsoft solutions for a more collaborative and unified workplace environment.&nbsp;Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:00:00 GMTTop Considerations for Running SAP Production Environments in the Cloud: Q&A with Joe Gallegohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/June/QA-with-Kichler-Gallego-on-running-SAP-in-the-cloud
<p>For SAP customers looking to cloud &nbsp;for faster provisioning and greater flexibility for SAP production environments, and especially so as organizations look ahead to SAP HANA deployment. IBM's Joe Gallego took reader&nbsp;questions on&nbsp;first steps, SLAs, and key&nbsp;considerations&nbsp;when planning to move your SAP production environment to the cloud. </p>Wed, 18 Jun 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhat Is New in Design Studio 1.3? Q&A with the Authors of Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studiohttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/June/QA-with-Hacking-and-van-der-A-on-SAP-BusinessObjects-Design-Studio
<p>How does SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.3 compare to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius), Analysis for Office, and BEx WAD? What are the new features in Design Studio 1.3? Xavier Hacking and Jeroen van der A, the authors of Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, take readers' questions in this online Q&amp;A.&nbsp;</p>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:00:00 GMTIntegrating SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors: Q&A with Prashanth Padmanabhan on the SAP Roadmap and Strategy for HRhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/June/QA-with-Prashanth-Padmanabhan-SAP-HCM-and-SuccessFactors-integration
<p style="text-autospace: ;">As HR systems continue to evolve toward the cloud, what are options for your SAP ERP HCM solutions?&nbsp; SAP's Prashanth Padmanabhan takes readers' questions on SAP&nbsp; ERP HCM and SuccessFactors integration strategy and roadmap.</p>Thu, 12 Jun 2014 04:00:00 GMTIntegrate Indirect Tax Calculation into Your SAP Global Finance Operations: Q&A with Stefan Blumerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/May/QA-with-Stefan-Blumer-on-indirect-tax-compliance
<p>What are best practices for managing&nbsp;indirect tax - including VAT, excise taxes, and goods and services taxes (GST) &ndash; with the complexity of regulations across countries and localities worldwide. In this Q&amp;A with Stefan Blumer, ask your questions on&nbsp;integrating&nbsp;indirect tax determination&nbsp;into your&nbsp;SAP financials, tax reporting, General Ledger and compliance solutions.</p>Tue, 20 May 2014 04:00:00 GMTSAP HANA Migration Options: Q&A with Frank Powell on Technical Considerations in a Move to SAP HANAhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/May/QA-with-Frank-Powell-on-SAP-HANA-migration-options
<p>In this online Q&amp;A, Frank Powell of Symmetry Corp. takes readers' questions on evaluating the various SAP HANA implementation scenarios and requirements, and key issues and challenges of HANA migration.</p>Wed, 14 May 2014 04:00:00 GMTDocument Your SAP Systems with SAP Solution Manager Tools: Q&A with Heiko Hecht on Using RBPD/SDA in 7.1http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/May/QA-with-Heiko-Hecht-on-SAP-Solution-Manager-Documentation-RBPD-SDA
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">What do you need to know about new content and functionality in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 to document your next SAP project, including &nbsp;SDA, RBPD, Solution Documentation/Business Blueprint, and Scope and Effort Analyzer (SEA)? Heiko Hecht takes readers&rsquo; questions on solution documentation with 7.1 in our online Q&amp;A.</p>Tue, 13 May 2014 04:00:00 GMTEnd-to-End Analytics on SAP HANA: Q&A with Arun Narayanan on Predictive Analysis and BI Tools Selectionhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/May/QA-with-Arun-Narayanan-on-analytics-and-BI-tools-for-SAP-HANA
How will SAP HANA drive our BI tools selection and roadmap considerations for Webi, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, Dashboards, Design Studio, Predictive Analysis, or SAP Lumira? In this online Q&amp;A, BI experts Arun Narayanan and Shayam Avvari take readers' questions&nbsp;about front-end analytics options and what an SAP HANA implementation will mean from an analytics perspective.Wed, 07 May 2014 04:00:00 GMTPlanning the Infrastructure for Your SAP HANA Environment: Q&A with Ryan D'Costa and Scott McCulloughhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/May/QA-Ryan-DCosta-and-Scott-McCullough-IT-infrastructure-for-SAP-HANA
<p>What are the key decision points for the IT infrastructure that will support SAP HANA? Fujitsu&rsquo;s Ryan D&rsquo;Costa and NetApp&rsquo;s Scott McCullough take reader questions on topics from IT optimization to &nbsp;storage, infrastructure, and data recovery in this online Q&amp;A.&nbsp;</p>Thu, 01 May 2014 04:00:00 GMTAutomate Operational Procurement with Your SAP Solutions: Q&A with SCM 2014 Speaker Pranay Shahhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Pranay-Shah-on-streamlining-procurement-with-SAP-solutions
<p>Where are your greatest opportunities to automate supplier registration, invoicing, and PO processing, and how can your SAP systems help streamline and reduce procurement cycle times? Logistics &amp; Supply Chain 2014 speaker Pranay Shah takes readers&rsquo; questions on streamlining and updating procurement processes.</p>Wed, 30 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTManaging Technical Monitoring within SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and CCMS: Q&A with Jereme Swobodahttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Jereme-Swoboda-on-SAP-Solution-Manager-71-System-Monitoring
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">With release 7.1, SAP Solution Manager offers Technical Monitoring and a number of ways to monitor your systems. Join our online Q&amp;A and ask your questions on configuring Technical Monitoring, preparing for CCMS migration to 7.1, and how some companies might continue to use CCMS with 7.1.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>Thu, 24 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTSAP WM or SAP EWM - Which Is Right for My Warehouse? Q&A with SCM 2014 Speaker Mat Eameshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Mat-Eames-on-SAP-WM-and-SAP-EWM
<p>With the dramatic differences between SAP ERP&rsquo;s Warehouse Management (WM) functionality and SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM), is there a reason <i>not </i>to move to SAP EWM? In this online Q&amp;A, SCM 2014 speaker Mat Eames takes readers&rsquo; questions on evaluating these two WMS offerings and your business requirements for WMS.&nbsp; <b></b></p>Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTImprove planning processes with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation on SAP HANA: Q&A with Scott Cairncrosshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Scott-Cairncross-on-SAP-BPC
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Whether you are evaluating&nbsp;the real-time capabilities of SAP BPC on SAP HANA or&nbsp;an upgrade to BPC 10.0/10.1&nbsp;on HANA,&nbsp;Financials 2014 speaker and BPC expert Scott Cairncross takes&nbsp;readers' questions on SAP Business Planning and Consolidation on HANA&nbsp;in this online Q&amp;A.</p>Wed, 16 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTTips & advice for SAP security role design and SAP Access Control 10.0: Q&A with PwC's Peter Hobsonhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Peter-Hobson-on-role-design-with-SAP-Access-Control
How can implementing shared, global SAP security roles simplify and speed up your current access requests provisioning processes? PwC's Peter Hobson takes readers&rsquo; questions on leading practices for managing security roles for your SAP systems.Thu, 10 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTUsing SAP River to Simplify Native Development on SAP HANA: Q&A with John Appleby and Chaim Bendelachttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-John-Appleby-and-Chaim-Bendelac-on-SAP-River
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">When SAP released a new development platform for SAP HANA, one of the first, inevitable questions was <em>Why?&nbsp; </em>SAP Mentor John Appleby and SAP Research VP Chaim Bendelac take&nbsp;reader questions on native HANA development with SAP River in this online Q&amp;A. </p>Tue, 08 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTTips for mobilizing your workforce and SAP processes: Q&A with Björn Neehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/April/QA-with-Bjorn-Nee-on-BYOD-and-mobility-with-SAP
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Despite the productivity gains of 24/7 mobility, only 16% of organizations allow employees to access backend ERP, CRM and HR processes on company devices &ndash; and what about BYOD? &nbsp;Sitrion technology evangelist Bjorn Nee takes reader questions on mobility best practices for your SAP systems in this SAPinsider live Q&amp;A. </p>Wed, 02 Apr 2014 04:00:00 GMTWhat you need to know about SAP ERP and APO data transfer using CIF: Q&A with SCM 2014 speaker Claudio Gonzalezhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/March/QA-with-Claudio-Gonzalez-on-SAP-APO-and-ERP-data-exchange-with-CIF
Join SCM expert Claudio Gonzalez for this live chat on optimizing and troubleshooting integration between SAP ERP and SAP APO using the core interface (CIF).Thu, 06 Mar 2014 05:00:00 GMTLeverage SAP HANA, Hadoop and CO-PA for Advanced Profitability Analysis: Q&A with Jothi Periasamyhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-Jothi-Periasamy-on-SAP-HANA-Hadoop-and-COPA
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">How and when can you use SAP HANA and Hadoop to improve decisionmaking for product pricing, customer segmentation, sales forecasts, and revenue predictions? Jothi Periasamy takes questions on using SAP HANA and Hadoop for pricing and demand analysis from sources such as CO-PA and Twitter.</p>Thu, 27 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTSuccessFactors Recruiting Solutions for SAP HR Hybrid and Cloud Deployments: Q&A with Dwight Jones and Gary Fanuccihttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-Dwight-Jones-and-Gary-Fanucci-on-SuccessFactors-Recruiting
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">What&rsquo;s the latest on SuccessFactors recruiting solutions and how will these solutions impact your on-premise HCM systems? &nbsp;HR experts Dwight Jones and Gary Fanucci take readers&rsquo; questions in a&nbsp; live online Q&amp;A on the latest on recruiting management solutions from SuccessFactors and options for SAP ERP HCM core customers.</p>Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTHow to increase usability for SAP ERP HCM and SharePoint: A live Q&A with Sitrion's Markus Dopphttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-Markus-Dopp-on-SAP-ERP-HCM-usability
<p>Travel and expenses, work life events, onboarding, enrollment, and other workflow approvals touch every user in your company. How can you deliver these functions to users intuitively and through the devices and platforms they are already using every day? Markus Dopp of Sitrion takes your questions on increasing SAP ERP HCM and Sharepoint in this live Q&amp;A.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>Thu, 20 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTManaging SoD risk across applications with SAP GRC: Q&A with EY's Prateek Jainhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-Prateek-Jain-on-SoD-and-SAP-GRC
SAP GRC can handle segregation of duties (SoD) analysis within your SAP applications, but can also&nbsp;identify SoD risk <em>across</em> SAP and non-SAP systems. GRC 2014 speaker Prateek Jain of EY takes questions from readers on the first steps to more comprehensively manage and prevent&nbsp;potential SoD violations.Tue, 18 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTInstalling and configuring SAP Sales Manager on SAP Mobile Platform: Q&A with CRM 2014 speaker Sandeep Rainahttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-Sandeep-Raina-on-SAP-CRM-Mobile-Sales
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">CRM 2014 speaker Sandeep Raina of Fujitsu&nbsp;America takes readers questions on best practices for installing SAP Sales Manager with SAP Mobile Platform. Learn more about technical requirements and timelines for CRM mobile sales implementation and configuration tips.&nbsp; </p>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTEvaluating, sizing and deploying SAP BusinessObjects Explorer: Q&A with BI expert David Dadounhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/February/our-chat-with-David-Dadoun-on-SAP-BusinessObjects-Explorer
<p>Where does SAP BusinessObjects Explorer fit into your BI tools selection process? How can you optimize performance and usability of this query tool? BI expert David Dadoun of Keyrus takes readers&rsquo; questions on evaluating, sizing and deploying SAP BusinessObjects Explorer in this Q&amp;A. <b>&nbsp;</b></p>Thu, 06 Feb 2014 05:00:00 GMTTips for setting up security authorizations in SAP Process Control: Q&A with Marc Jacksonhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/January/our-chat-with-Marc-Jackson-on-SAP-Process-Control
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">In this Q&amp;A on SAP Process Control,&nbsp; GRC 2014 speaker and security consultant Marc Jackson takes readers&rsquo; questions setting up security authorizations in SAP Process Control. What makes the authorization concept unique and what are the first steps and best practices for setting up security in SAP Process Control? </p>Thu, 30 Jan 2014 05:00:00 GMTPrepare now for profit center reorganization: Q&A with Mikhail Ostrov on tools and options for SAP General Ledgerhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/January/our-chat-with-Mikhail-Ostrov-on-profit-center-reorganization
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">How can you make&nbsp;the restructuring of profit centers in the new&nbsp;SAP&nbsp;General Ledger as painless as possible?&nbsp; Prepare now for&nbsp;restructuring&nbsp;profit centers&nbsp;- and get technical advice on using the profit center reorganization tool&nbsp;- in this Q&amp;A&nbsp;with Financials 2014 speaker Mikhail Ostrov of Ernst &amp; Young.&nbsp; </p>Thu, 23 Jan 2014 05:00:00 GMTChat with Jeremy Masters on Compensation Management options with SAP and SuccessFactorshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2014/January/our-chat-with-Jeremy-Masters-on-compensation-management-with-SAP-and-SuccessFactors
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">What are your options for deploying SAP compensation management functionality on-premise or in the cloud&nbsp;- and what are the downstream impacts of doing so?&nbsp;Follow our&nbsp;Q&amp;A with HR 2014 speaker Jeremy Masters, covering on the latest compensation management features from SAP and SuccessFactors, we discuss cloud, on-premise and hybrid options for tackling employee pay and budgeting, as well as questions about key features, and extensibility and integration with backend SAP processes.</p>Thu, 16 Jan 2014 05:00:00 GMTBI Upgrade Q&A: Steps, best practices and tips for moving to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/December/our-SAP-BI-Upgrades-chat-with-Dr-Berg-and-Team
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">BI expert Dr. Bjarne Berg and the ComeritLabs&nbsp;team&nbsp;took reader questions and shared tips based on their own recent BI 4.1 upgrade experiences.</p>Tue, 17 Dec 2013 05:00:00 GMTThe Hows and Whys of Moving to SAP HANA: Q&A on Tips for a Smooth Migrationhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/December/QA-on-SAP-HANA-migration-COPYearned
<p>As a follow up to their webinar "Stay Calm and Move to SAP HANA", HP&rsquo;s Anita Paul and Amit Chakravarti take questions from readers in this online Q&amp;A on the key technical issues &ndash; from deployment options to impact on current code &ndash; when planning an SAP HANA migration.</p>Mon, 16 Dec 2013 05:00:00 GMTWhat's new in SuccessFactors for hybrid SAP HR deployments?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/December/our-chat-on-SuccessFactors-for-hybrid-SAP-HR-deployments
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The authors of the SAP PRESS bestseller <em>SuccessFactors&nbsp;with SAP ERP HCM</em>&nbsp;return to chat about&nbsp;the new SuccessFactors features available now, what's coming in 2014, and how&nbsp;these changes&nbsp;will affect your planned and current&nbsp;hybrid SAP HR deployments.</p>Wed, 11 Dec 2013 17:30:00 GMTFine tune production planning processes and configuration: Chat with the author of Production Planning and Control with SAP ERP, Jawad Akhtarhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/November/November-19-chat-with-the-author-of-Production-Planning-for-SAP-ERP
<p>How can you optimize your production planning and production types to meet your needs? Join the author of <i>Production Planning and Control with SAP ERP</i> for a live Q&amp;A on November 19<sup> </sup>and ask your questions about configuring and managing discrete, process, and repetitive manufacturing production types in your SAP ERP system.</p>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:00:00 GMTGetting started with SAP Mobile Platform tools: Q&A with the authors of Mobile Development for SAPhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/November/Online-Chat-with-the-Authors-of-Mobile-Development-for-SAP
<p>What do you need to know about MBOs, Hybrid Web Containers, and SDKs to begin building apps using SAP Mobile Platform? The authors of <em>Mobile Development for SAP&nbsp;</em>&nbsp;shared their advice in a Q&amp;A with our readers.</p>Wed, 13 Nov 2013 05:00:00 GMTWhat's changing with SAP BusinessObjects BI Tools in 4.1?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/November/Bjarne-Berg-on-Latest-BI-Upgrades-and-SAP-BusinessObjects-Tools
<p style="margin: 0pt;">With their recent upgrade to SAP BusinessObject BI 4.1 SP1, Dr. Berg and the ComeritLabs team are now testing out the new features of SAP BusinessObjects tools. Join our online chat with them on November 7 to discuss new tools features, and get implementation and integration tips on tools like Webi, Dashboards, and Analysis in 4.1.</p>Thu, 07 Nov 2013 05:00:00 GMTRecruiting and retaining super users: Q&A with Helen Frericks on building a successful super user programhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/November/Recruiting-super-users-and-rebuilding-super-user-programs
A big SAP upgrade is looming and your old super users are nowhere to be found. How do you restart a stalled super user program – and maintain it for the long-term? Join our one-hour chat on November 6 with Helen Frericks. Share your super user challenges and experiences, and get tips from Helen on reviving an SAP super user program in her own organization.Wed, 06 Nov 2013 05:00:00 GMTWhat's coming with SAP Access Control 10.1? Q&A with Deloitte's Kurt Hollishttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/October/Kurt-Hollis-on-SAP-Access-Control
A new release of SAP Access Control is now in rampup. What will change with release 10.1?&nbsp;What can you do now&nbsp;to&nbsp;evaluate and prepare for this new release?&nbsp;On October 30, GRC expert Kurt Hollis takes your technical questions about&nbsp;Access Control 10.1,&nbsp;in a one-hour online chat.&nbsp; Kurt will cover&nbsp;technical topics such as integration with SAP HANA, new AC reporting and analytics features, andWed, 30 Oct 2013 04:00:00 GMTStreamline Testing of Your Mobility Projects: Q&A with Shoeb Javed on Testing Best Practices for Mobile Applicationshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/October/Shoeb-Javed-on-Managing-Testing-in-Enterprise-Mobility-Projects
How many devices will your next mobile app run on? With every additional device and platform, your project&rsquo;s testing time, resources and risk can grow exponentially. Join expert and Managing your SAP Projects speaker Shoeb Javed on October 29 and ask your questions on best practices and tools to close out your mobility project&rsquo;s testing phase faster and more efficiently.Tue, 29 Oct 2013 04:00:00 GMTSAP HR user experience and UI options: Q&A with Jeremy Mastershttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/October/Jeremy-Masters-on-UI-options-for-HR
<p>What's the latest on UIs and user experience for SAP solutions for HR? Join Jeremy Masters in a one-hour chat on Wednesday, October 16 to ask your questions about Fiori, Renewal, enhancement package 6, and the UI options now available with SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors.</p>Wed, 16 Oct 2013 04:00:00 GMTPreparing for Enterprise Mobility projects: Q&A with Jim Cameron and Steven Crookehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/September/CameronCrooke-MobilityQA-Sept2013
Follow our discussion with Enterprise Mobility 2013 speakers Jim Cameron and Steven Crooke, who will be presenting a number of sessions at SAPinsider’s upcoming Enterprise Mobility 2013 conference on developing mobile assessments and building a mobile strategy.Wed, 25 Sep 2013 04:00:00 GMTLive Q&A with the authors of SuccessFactors for SAP ERP HCMhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/September/SuccessFactor-Authors-QandA-Sept2013
The authors of <em>SuccessFactors for SAP ERP HCM</em>, Amy Grubb, Luke Marson and Jyoti Sharma, took questions in a chat sponsored by SAP PRESS. Watch the replay and review all their HR advice and tips.Thu, 19 Sep 2013 04:00:00 GMTThe latest on SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio: Q&A with SAP mentor Tammy Powlashttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/September/PowlasQA-Sep2013
Review Tammy Powlas's Q&A on SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. Reporting & Analytics 2013 speaker Tammy Powlas took questions on her experiences at Fairfax Water beta testing Design Studio 1.1, including discussions of new features in 1.1 and where it fits into BI tool selection.Tue, 17 Sep 2013 04:00:00 GMTEmerging best practices for SAP BW HANA data modeling & reporting: Q&A with Dr. Bjarne Berg (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/August/Emerging-best-practices-for-SAP-BW-HANA-data-modeling-reporting-QA-with-Dr-dot-Bjarne-Berg-transcri
The SAP HANA data model is still evolving. What&rsquo;s in store for InfoCubes, and what&rsquo;s the status of the LSA architecture? In the future, will we see more reporting directly from SAP ERP on SAP HANA? Comerit&rsquo;s Dr. Bjarne Berg took questions from our audience to discuss the emerging best practices for SAP BW on HANA data models and reporting. Dr. Berg is an author, consultant, professor, and long-time speaker at our BI conferences. He is presenting SAPinsider's upcoming SAP BI seminar on dashboards and reporting and is co-author, with IBM&rsquo;s Penny Silvia, of SAP HANA: An Introduction (2nd edition) from SAP PRESS. Molly Folan, SAPinsider Events: Welcome, Dr. Berg! Dr. Berg: Before we start today's session, let me give some reflections on the need for BW InfoCubes. Do We Need InfoCubes? Currently, there is significant debate on Internet blogs and forums concerning whether InfoCubes are needed with an SAP HANA system. However, for the interim period, InfoCubes are needed for several reasons. First, transactional InfoCubes are needed for Integrated Planning (IP) and write-back options. InfoCubes are also needed to store and manage noncumulative key figures, and the direct write interface (RSDRI) only works for InfoCubes. In addition, the transition from SAP NetWeaver BW to SAP HANA is simplified by allowing customers to move to the new platform without having to rewrite application logic, queries, MultiProviders, and data transformations from DSOs to InfoCubes. However, the continued use of InfoCubes has to be questioned. The introduction of the star schema, snowflakes, and other dimensional data modeling (DDM) techniques in the 1990s reduced costly table joins in relational databases, while avoiding the data redundancy of data stored in first normal form (1NF) in operational data stores (ODSs). The removal of the relational database from SAP HANA&rsquo;s in-memory processing makes most of the benefits of DDM moot, and continued use of these structures is questionable. In the future, we may see multilayered DSOs with different data retention and granularity instead. But, for now, InfoCubes will serve a transitional data storage role for most companies. Thanks, Dr. Berg Mariano Filiberto : Dear Dr. Berg, Thanks for the opportunity of discussing this topic!! It was a pity that it was not included in the SAP BI conference. It is a major topic that deserves more than one hour, but let's start somewhere. I am looking forward to your view/update of the evolution of the LSA model/framework. Some generic questions: ulTue, 06 Aug 2013 18:10:00 GMTSAP CRM data models & the one order framework: Q&A with Stephen Johannes (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/August/SAP-CRM-data-models-the-one-order-framework-QA-with-Stephen-Johannes-transcript
SAP CRM&rsquo;s &ldquo;one order&rdquo; framework is a significant departure from the SAP ERP data model. How does this shape your development and enhancement efforts? CRM consultant Stephen Johannes, author of the SAP PRESS book SAP CRM Technical Principles and Programming , took readers&rsquo; questions about the SAP CRM data model, from basics to technical transactions. This Q&A, moderated by SAPexperts ' CRM Hub editor Scott Etkin, covered some of the questions and confusion around SAP CRM&rsquo;s one order framework and differences between the CRM and ERP data models. (For more on the book, visit the SAP PRESS Bookstore . You can also read excerpts from the book on the SAPexperts CRM Hub, here and here .) You can review the entire discussion thread in our Forum archives , or read the edited transcript here: Scott Etkin: Welcome, Stephen, and thanks for taking the time to answer some questions today. Stephen Johannes: Thank you for having me today. I look forward to answering the questions here as much as possible. If there is something I can't answer, but might know a friend with the answer(if beyond our scope). I will try to post answer here later, otherwise I will start with the current questions already out there. acanella: Hi Stephen, I send you my first question: Why haven&rsquo;t you chosen to speak about BRF PLUS? I mean in the section at page 327 you describe partner determination access rule. I can imagine you speak access sequence, partner determination procedure and the relative BADI used to be used in a custom access sequence. I mean you can obtain just the same via Rule modeler. Why haven&rsquo;t you spoken about it? Can you provide a quick comparison with advantages and disadvantages, by employing the two methods? Stephen Johannes: The simple answer is that a book has a limited scope, so I couldn&rsquo;t cover every topic. I also had a limited timeframe to write this, even though it took a year from start to finish. BRF+ is only available starting with CRM 7.0 EHP1 and the content design of the book was geared towards CRM 7.0 instead when I started. If there were a 2 nd edition of the book then I would have wanted to cover rapid applications and redo all the examples using BRF+ instead. In terms of a comparison between BRF you have to remember all the access sequence/determination procedures are built into the system. The BRF+ rules are not built in, so you would need to use BTE or BADI&rsquo;s to put them as part of your business transaction. For now however using BRF+ would need custom code to have the rules invoked. acanella: Hi Stephen, I send now the second question: Imagine I have to integrate in the frame of the factsheet (smart form version), a report coming from BO that contains graphics. What kind of API can I call to retrieve data from BO to fill properly the smartform with the content with BO graphics? You have spoken about common enhancement having always an BI as Reporting tool. But imagine that instead of BI there is a BO. Is it more complicated to integrate across SAP CRM a BO report? Stephen Johannes: I&rsquo;m not a business object person so I really don&rsquo;t have an answer to that question. In theory if you have a web services or RFC compatible API on the BO side you could then grab the binary blog that way. I would then take and render a smartform as HTML with a IMG placeholder for your binary blob. However I&rsquo;m just guessing on this scenario. I forwarded this question in advance to my BOBJ friends and they said there was a REST API that could be used for this requirement. I would recommend that you talk to your BOBJ developer for more information on the REST API. Ken Murphy: Hello Stephen, thank you for taking these questions. I'd like to know, what are first steps or tips for product master changes (adding attributes, etc.) that require enhancements to the data model? Thank you! Stephen Johannes: Essentially, when you are adding attributes to the product master you are enhancing the data model. The most common scenario when you have CRM integrated with SAP ERP as the backend is that you have extended the material master with a new attribute that is required for pricing or sales order processing or perhaps some type of search. If you use the tools delivered by SAP to extend the product master then there is no coding needed unless you want to update or manipulate the data via code. acanella: Hi Stephen, I experienced personally the following case. My customer is currently running CRM 7.0 SP 6. He asked me to enhance the view BP_SALES, or better said the sales area data. I actually followed this forum . Indeed the whole castle is working. The point is that I have also checked that from CRM 7.02 or better said CRM 7.0 EHP 2 is possible to use straight AET to enhance view BP_SALES. The question is: how to manage the future upgrade? Dismantling implicit enhancement points, suggested by the above forum , following the standard or continuing with the old solution? Thanks in advance, AndreA Stephen Johannes: Keep the old solution and just live with it. It&rsquo;s going to be more of a migration pain to move all your custom fields over to standard. I have not really looked at the AET for EHP2 in extending this part, but unless it uses a customizing include for this, then the data model will change to the AET table extension concept which is completely different than your manual extension in 7.0. Scott Etkin: From your talk at SAPitSTL, it&rsquo;s clear that the CRM data model, &ldquo;One Data Model to Rule Them All,&rdquo; is a dramatic change from typical SAP systems. What do you see as the biggest adjustment for anyone in SAP CRM in making the shift from working with SAP ERP data? Stephen Johannes: The two biggest changes involve the primary key design of the tables and segmented data model. In CRM the primary key on several if not all of the tables is the GUID or globally unique identifier. In the traditional ERP system we are used to the unique key being a a technical ID that is numerical character such as customer number or document number. The GUID instead is a generated identifier that is unique across the system. For the segmented data model we no longer have tables with hundreds of fields such as VBAK, MARA. Instead there are header tables with segment tables which may or may not be filled depending on the transaction type. The one order model can model several different processes. In addition the CRM business partner models not just customers but several different partner types. It is like having the customer master/vendor master/contact master/employee master all in a single model which is definitely different from ERP. acanella: Hi Stephen, Here is another question: Can you just suggest better what is the better tecnologies to integrate external application? WS or RFC calls. To me SAP CRM is moving towards WS implementation, as it is supposed to be a better SOA technique. Anyway, somehow, the usage of RFC calls is still common, especially to integrate SAP CRM with SAP ECC. Is SAP planning to move from RFCs to WS? Thanks in advance, AndreA Stephen Johannes: The interesting comparison about RFC vs WS is that SAP only really promoted use for SOA for applications outside of the business suite. We have had SOA based communication in the NetWeaver Stack since 2003 and yet I have yet to see WS used for application to application communication for CRM. I think part of the problem is that RFC has less overhead than WS. That being said, I would probably go with building RFC&rsquo;s for ABAP to ABAP communication and then WS for everything else. If you design things right you can reuse between use scenarios. Shobhit: A simple question for development perspective: If we need to do some changes for WebUI we should code at BADI (if available) or at component level, which will be more effective performance wise. Stephen Johannes: Business logic should always be coding in the BADI level, while leaving the WebUI for user interface or navigation/display logic. This becomes extremely important if you do mobile sales and want that logic to be extended when data is received by another application. From a performance perspective I don't really see too much of a difference provided you always use the API's instead of direct database reads to access the data in your application. shankars8r: What is the best way to know where the Smartform is used in CRM? I do not see a table like TNAPR. Stephen Johannes: Smartforms being executed in SAP CRM are normally done through the post processing framework. Each business transaction contains an action profile which are assigned in the IMG under CRM-Sat, 03 Aug 2013 16:18:00 GMTJoshua Fletcher on universe design in SAP BI 4.0 (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/July/Joshua-Fletcher-on-universe-design-in-SAP-BI-4-dot-0-QA-transcript
SAP mentor and BI 2013 speaker Joshua Fletcher stayed up late in Australia to join us for a one-hour live chat on universe design. In this preview of some of the topics he'll be covering in his Singapore sessions , he covered everything from universe design fundamentals to technical questions on setting context joins and converting from UNVs to UNXs, as well as an extreme example of bad universe design. For Josh's tips and advice, read the transcript of the Q&A chat here: Moderator: Josh, thanks again for joining us today. We have a lot of questions coming in, so great to get started. I know it&rsquo;s late there &ndash; so thank you for taking the time for this followup Q&A. If we could send you a coffee right now, we would! Joshua Fletcher: Hi everyone, thanks for coming along to this Q&A. Excited to be with you for the next hour. Scott: With Information Design Tool, what are best practices for managing security and access restriction requirements? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Scott, there are several layers to this. Hopefully you would be restricting access to the IDT application itself. From there, you would use the CMC security lock down access for universe designers. You would most likely also want to secure access to certain universes for certain designers. There are also additional levels of granularity around the universe security you could add. You then also have additional levels of security, such as access restrictions, within the universe. As this is quite a broad topic, and dependent on the business requirements, I'd recommend getting familiar with the different options to best be able to implement a security model that works best for your organisation. Paul: In BOXI 3.1 I have one dimension UNV with about 50 dimensions and about 20 'data mart' UNV's that link to that one dimension UNV. How would I accomplish something like this in the IDT? Because I believe linking UNX's is not possible? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Paul, the new separation of the Data Foundation and Business Layer should be able to achieve this functionality for you. The Data Foundation would be maintained once, and multiple Business Layers (your 20x data mart UNVs) could leverage this. Linking UNXs is a highly requested feature so SAP are hopefully considering how they can add this in future. Ken: Hello, I'm curious if you've seen any issues or pitfalls to avoid in any new features in IDT, like User Attribute Mapping?Thanks! Joshua Fletcher: Hi Ken, I unfortunately hadn't had time to play with the user attribute mapping as much as I would have liked - so haven't come across any pitfalls in this area. From my experience, the new DF and BL separation, combined with broad EDWs, mean you need to review your development processes and align them with the new way of building your universes. Also, the multi-source capability, whilst awesome in potential, has the ability to cause serious performance issues on both the report level, BOBJ server and database impact if not well tested and tuned. This is an area to invest time in making sure it works well. Guest: Is there any option to change single source universe as Multi source Universe using IDT? Joshua Fletcher: Hello. Sorry I don't believe this is possible once you've created a universe as single/multi source. Maybe something to log on Idea Place? Darren: When setting context joins, should you specifically allow or deny all joins? In what circumstance would it be better to leave a join neutral? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Darren, great question - I love talking about contexts :-) Firstly, you should verify all your join cardinalities are set correctly. Then, detect the contexts required. This should automatically set the majority of your joins to what is recommended. If you were to do it manually, only joins that are part of the context should be Allowed. Any joins from opposing contexts should be Denied. Any joins that aren't part of any context should be Neutral. Guest: If I want to connect to BEX queries or BW infocubes to BO, do I need to build universe? Joshua Fletcher: Hello, thanks for your question. It really depends on your use cases and what BOBJ tools you wish to deploy. The recommended approach is to use the Analysis suite of tools to connect directly to the Bex queries using BICS. Crystal Reports for Enterprise, Web Intelligence and Xcelsius Dashboards also connect directly to Bex via BICS. If you have a scenario where you need to use Explorer/Lumira, and/or a scenario where you need to combine BW data with non-SAP data, only then should you create a UNX on top of the BW InfoProvider. Ram: Hi, Can we link DSO&rsquo;s and Bex Query in one Universe? If yes, how do we do that? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Ram, I don't believe that's possible. The current UNX only allows connectivity to InfoProviders, not Bex queries. You *may* be able to achieve this at the report level, such as in Web Intelligence, but I have not tried this. Madhu: Designing a universe - Best Practices? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Madhu, there are lots. A few years ago I posted a list of best practices, most of which still hold true. You can review it here . Let me know if you want more detail of any area. Ram: Hi, If you want to display hierarchy (which is in SAP BW), how do you do that in IDT? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Ram, the UNX does not support multidimensional hierarchies, only relational 'flat' hierarchies. If you need OLAP capabilities, you should use the Analysis suite of tools in the BusinessObjects portfolio. Andre: I heard that SAP may re-introduce derived/link Universe in the new IDT, why was it not part of the original design? If so, will the Upgrade Mangement tool convert the unv to uvx? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Andre, I can't speak for SAP so not sure why it wasn't originally included, or whether the UMT will upgrade UNVs to UNXs. If this is an area you are keen to be kept up-to-date on, I'd recommend engaging with the ASUG Influence Councils, the Ramp-up program and the like - there are lots of ways to give more direct feedback to SAP. Moderator: Thanks to everyone for joining us today, and some great questions! We're seeing lots of questions for Josh today, and we'll make sure we get to everyone's post. (All your posts go into moderation, but we'll be posting them shortly as Josh answers them - they haven't disappeared). Back to Josh, who certainly needs some coffee now... John: I see there is conversion functionality in the IDT to convert UNV's to UNX's but I have had mixed results where joins seem to be altrered between the 2. Is this an issue that they are looking to resolve soon? Joshua Fletcher: Hi John, it is definitely a case by case on how the origin universe is designed. Of course any conversion process (I'm looking at you Report Conversion Tool) is not perfect, and you should always back up a conversion project with lots of technical and business testing. If you have specific universes which cause the issues, this may be something you can feed back to SAP to help them improve the conversion tool. Scott: When I design a Universe I use left and inner joins, but when I run a query and view the script it shows right joins and I always question the results. Any idea why you can't force Left Outer joins? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Scott, I have no idea about this, but don't forget that the IDT generates different SQL based on both the database driver being used as well as the database parameters you've set. Maybe something to explore further? Scott Wallask : Hey Josh -- Nice to see you on here and thanks for staying up late in Australia. I know when we've talked in the past, you mention that users need to get business value from a universe. How would characterize business value in this case, what does it "look" like? Joshua Fletcher: Hey Scott, you're welcome. In regards to business value, I think a universe should always be designed with the end-user report developer in mind. I've seen examples where the universe is basically a copy of the database structure. For any report developer who isn't database savvy, this is very confusing. While that's a really bad example, there are many ways universe develops can deliver business value. A continuous improvement initiative around all universes will deliver value, just by letting your BI devs know that their input is sought for how to improve the universe. Other examples would be flesh out the dimensional hierarchies, set object formatting, explode out date fields into components like Year, Year-Month, Month No and Name, Day Name etc - and of course, deliver a universe that *always* generates correct SQL. Wrong numbers are the quickest way to kill the usefulness of a universe! Aqeeq: I've noticed something in IDT 4.0 till SP5 , when I click on a table and select "refresh structure", it refreshes entire structure of all the tables. This is different from Designer in BOXI 3.1 when only the selected Tables would refresh. Is there a way to replicate that functionality in IDT? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Aqeeq, no something I've tried myself I'm sorry, so can't comment on if this is possible. If anyone else can help, please chime in. Guest: Hello, if you want to search the hierarchy - can you do that? Not just LOV, but the whole hierarchy? Joshua Fletcher: Hello, do you mean a Bex hierarchy, or the relational 'flat' hierarchy? Guest: Flat hierarchy Joshua Fletcher: Hmm sorry I haven't heard of a requirement to search through the complete hierarchy, and don't think it's supported in a simple way. There would be a way to achieve it, I'm sure - by flattening the values into a single dimension, or with input controls perhaps. Someone developed a cool solution searching with input controls across multiple values - maybe this could solve it? blog.davidg.com.au/2012/04/search-field-... Venkat: What are best practices to get better performance by using the multi source enabled universe (unx)? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Venkat, to begin with, ensure you are working with your respective DBAs to tune each database connection in your multi-source universe. Set the parameters appropriately, and keep an open dialogue. Once your universe is being developed, look to use the Data Federator Administration Tool - I've heard case studies where this has improved performance massively, just by tuning for common queries. Also check out this great blog by Jon Haun Ilan: Can you provide any guidance on performance tuning in the IDT? For example, what steps do you take? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Ilan, take a look at my response to Venkat above - the first part also applies to single source universes. You should also spend a lot of time with the SQL generation, look at things like using index awareness, aggregate awareness and the like. Philip: Hi Josh. Great session! When generating a UNV Universe on a SAP BEx query (with variables) we notice that sometimes the filter key is generated with an arbitrary ID e.g. .. on other occasions it is generated with the technical name of the BW variable. Any ideas why this happens? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Philip, great to have you along! I'm sorry, but haven't come across that scenario myself. Have you noticed that it only happens with certain Bex design, or taken it up with SAP support to try to resolve it? Darren: What is the best way to apply row level security across the board in the universe? Do you make use of the data security profiles or would you recommend simply forcing a filter to be applied in all queries? Joshua Fletcher: Hi Darren, you can create a filter object and then force it to always be included in queries. This would be useful for very simple row level restriction, however if the row level restriction needs to be done by user/group, then it would quickly become a maintenance headache - so then data security profiles would be best. Moderator: Josh, This question was posted to one of our forum threads by Dimetry. Maybe you can shed some light on this issue? Hi I have a question regarding reconnecting my dashboard to a new universe. Last week I tried to re point my dashboard to a new universe, when I found that this is not an option. The old universe became corrupted and not usable so when I tried to re point it to a new universe I got an error; the dashboard was looking for the CUID associated with old universe and the only thing I have to do is to re build my queries against the new universe. Is there is any better way to re point dashboards to universes different than keeping them together or rebuilding the queries , as for reports you can reconnect to a new source of data by setting the data source location under the database tab . Thank you. Joshua Fletcher: Dimitrey, Unfortunately it's a known issue with Dashboard 4.0, and from the what's new in 4.1 (see here ) it doesn't look like this has changed. I haven't tried it in 4.1 myself yet, but unfortunately you'll need to look for workarounds - such as using BI Web Services to act as a front for the query. In future, you can avoid universe corruption by doing version control and regular backups using LCM. Guest: Any advice on how to get started with 4.0 in general, Webi and UNV dev? Joshua Fletcher: Hello. There's lot of videos and content all over the web. You could start with the product tutorials on SCN, like scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-7725&lrm;. You can subscribe to an Amazon BOBJ instance also, but this is a little costly. I think there is also a trial of BusinessObjects Edge (for the SME market, but exactly the same functionality as BusinessObjects) floating around somewhere. Guest: I believe the ability to have multiple BL's is the most poweful feature of the IDT. Do you have any recommendations on how best to mange these and how to roll them out to the different user communities as well user training issues? Joshua Fletcher: I agree it is certainly a great new feature that is very powerful. Once you publish the BL, it appears as a regular self-contained universe, and has no ties back to the central DF. Therefore, your different user communities and training hopefully aren't too bad - they would be the same as in XI 3.1. I would spend time on getting the development process right to leverage the opportunity on only needing to maintain one DF for multiple BLs. Dave: Josh, would you say the IDT lends itself to a more collaborative design process or environment? If so, any examples? Thanks. Joshua Fletcher: Hi Dave, I interpreted your question two ways, so I'll reply each way - hopefully one of them is what you meant :-) Firstly, in terms of collaborating with the business during development, I think the IDT is much easier to do this with. For instance, the new data profiling functionality in the DF, and especially the much-improved Query Tool, means you can test the output of the BL without leaving the IDT. So you could invite your business users over to your desk, run them through some queries, and get direct feedback without going through the old process of Export UnvWed, 31 Jul 2013 19:45:00 GMTNathan Williams on configuring Change Control Management & ChaRM in SAP Solution Manager 7.1http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/July/Nathan-Williams-on-configuring-Change-Control-Management-ChaRM-in-SAP-Solution-Manager-7-dot-1
When moving to SAP Solution Manager 7.1, what are the key steps for configuring and fine-tuning change control processes? What do you need to know about ChaRM, Quality Gate Management, Retrofit, and CTS+ in 7.1? Solution Manager Seminar speaker and SAPexperts author Nathan Williams took questions in a recent Q&A in Insider Learning Network&rsquo;s IT Forum thread. SAPexperts editor Scott Priest moderated the discussion with Nathan Williams, author of the SAP PRESS book IT Service Management in SAP Solution Manager . You can follow the discussion thread in our IT Forum archives, or read the transcript here: Scott Priest: Thank you for joining us in the IT Forum discussion thread today! I&rsquo;m delighted to have SAPexperts author Nathan Williams taking questions today on change control management in SAP Solution Manager. Nathan is author of SAPexperts Solution Manager articles, and he&rsquo;s written the book on ITSM with Solution Manager. He&rsquo;s also a speaker at this fall&rsquo;s Solution Manager Seminar. Welcome, Nathan! Nathan Williams: Thanks for the introduction, Scott! I'm happy to join Insider Learning Network for another SAP Solution Manager Q&A. Today, I'll provide answers to your questions about Change Control Management in SAP Solution Manager 7.1. Let's get started! Scott Priest: While people are still arriving, I'll kick things off: With some updates in tools and configuration of Change Control with 7.1, what's the relationship now between ChaRM and Quality Gate Management? Nathan Williams: Scott, the relationship between ChaRM and Quality Gate Management (QGM) is important to understand so thanks for kicking things off with that question. Change Control Mgmt in SolMan is comprised of many components. We'll get to those individually throughout the Q&A, but two of the main components are ChaRM and QGM. ChaRM provides the approvals, workflows, automation and audit trails to manage both SAP and non-SAP related changes to your landscape. Since it provides somewhat tighter control, this component provides most value when deployed after a solution has gone-live. QGM, on the other hand, controls transport releases by means of quality gates. Specific milestones, deliverables, and documents are identified that must be fulfilled BEFORE transports can be promoted to the follow-on systems. QGM allows project teams to go about their configuration and transport management without strict change control procedures, which is essential during implementation mode! QGM can also be set up in a matter of days, which is a big win. With the release of 7.1, QGM is now integrated into ChaRM to marry both aspects and provide a much more holistic and central change control solution. Luis Salvador: Ok Scott, A first question for Nathan: Is there any possibility to use CHARM without to be assigned to any project maintenance/implementation? There are a lot of customers that only need an approval process but don't need the project phase control inside maintenance cycle. Regards, Luis Nathan Williams: Hello Luis, it is nice to see you on the Q&A this morning. ChaRM's foundational backbone is the task list / cycle transaction that is tied to a maintenance or implementation project. Since ChaRM leverages TMS configuration for everything related to STMS, and the project's cycle is built off of that infrastructure, it is not possible to deploy the intended ChaRM solution without these components. However, the General Change document type (SMCG) available with SAP Solution Manager 7.1 is the only change document type that is not tied to a maintenance / implementation project cycle. While it is not SAP standard and not recommended as a ChaRM solution, you could utilize this transaction type to track the approval processes outside of phase control. Crisper: I would like to post some first questions: ol start="1"Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:44:00 GMTWhat a global rollout means for your local SAP Financials processes: Q&A with Financials 2013 speaker Rohana Gunawardenahttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/July/What-a-global-rollout-means-for-your-local-SAP-Financials-processes-QA-with-Financials-2013-speaker
How can a global SAP ERP rollout make the most of standard templates, but still meet currency and accounting requirements for local Finance teams? Rohana took questions in a live Q&A covering topics such as preparing local Finance teams for global template, ensuring that Finance owns the right modules pre-rollout, and avoiding currency conversion pitfalls in global finance systems.Thu, 25 Jul 2013 21:03:00 GMTWhy all the buzz around S&OP? Joseph Grobler on optimizing inventory with SAP ERP (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/July/Why-all-the-buzz-around-SOP-Joseph-Grobler-on-optimizing-inventory-with-SAP-ERP-QA-transcript
Sales forecasts are nothing new - so why all the excitement around sales and operations planning (S&OP) now? That's the question behind our most recent SCM Q&A with Reveal&rsquo;s Joseph Grobler, a speaker at SAPinsider&rsquo;s Supply Chain Bootcamp . Joseph took questions from our audience in a live discussion thread on developoing S&OP processes using SAP ERP systems, just a few days before our summer Bootcamp kicked off in Chicago. You can review all the discussion in our Forum archives , or read the transcript here: Allison Martin, moderator: Welcome to today's SCM Forum . Today, I&rsquo;m very happy to be joined by Supply Chain Bootcamp speaker Joseph Grobler of Reveal, here in the SCM Forum thread to take your questions on sales operations & planning with SAP ERP. Joseph is a Senior Partner with Reveal, and always gets rave reviews for his sessions at Supply Chain Bootcamp. Welcome, Joseph, and thanks for joining us today! Joseph Grobler: Good to be here, thank you! Scott Etkin: What reporting options do you recommend for executive-level S&OP reporting? Joseph Grobler: Two catogories of reporting work: one is referred to as health check and the other is referred to as value check. ulWed, 17 Jul 2013 20:05:00 GMTTips on Territory Management in SAP CRM 7.0: Christian Matz on managing sales territories (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/June/Tips-on-Territory-Management-in-SAP-CRM-7-dot-0-Christian-Matz-on-managing-sales-territories-QA-tran
As of enhancement pack 1, SAP CRM Sales 7.0 refined your options for configuring sales territories and structures for sales force assignments. SAPexperts advisor and CRM 2013 speaker Christian Matz of ecenta took questions on those changes in a recent online Q&A in our CRM Forum discussion thread. The discussion was moderated by Amy Thistle, conference producer for CRM 2013. You can review the entire thread or read our edited transcript here: Amy Thistle, SAPinsider Events: Thank you for joining in our CRM Forum today! I&rsquo;m very happy to have Christian Matz of ecenta joining us today to take your questions. Christian is CTO at Ecenta and an SAP CRM expert. He is a SAPexperts advisor for their CRM hub , and I've worked with him as a valued speaker at SAPinsider&rsquo;s annual CRM conferences . Today, he&rsquo;ll be taking your questions on managing your Sales assignments and territories with SAP CRM, and the features that have come with release 7.0 and the latest enhancement packs. Christian Matz, ecenta: Hi all, Also from my side thanks a lot for joining today. I will try to answer as many of your questions, time permitting. Looking forward to a lively discussion! acanella: Hi Christian Is it possible to remove territories from SAP CRM? I know that SAP is suggesting using dates or the merge functionality if it applies, but my concern was if there is the deletion possibility, via a report. Thanks in advance, AndreA Christian Matz: Hi AndreaA, Yes, deletion is possible, even from the UI. You would of course still have to make sure all relevant accounts are still to some territory. Best, Christian Ken Murphy: Hello Christian, can you give a few ideas about how customers are integrating the Territory Management functions with other SAP CRM processes? Thank you! Christian Matz: Hello Ken, Typically the main reasons for using Territory Management are to control/restrict access and to use territories for reporting, either within CRM or in BI. Some CRM functionality, such as Pipeline Performance Management come with integration to TM built in Another functionality companies want to use TM for is to assign their sales to territories and based on the calculate commission. Of course this works best, if orders are created in CRM. Typically there is additional effort, if the orders are created in ECC only or at least in parts. Amy Thistle: I know there are a few questions already waiting, but as folks join us, I wanted to ask: Can you start out with a few basics on the functionality in SAP CRM 7.0 for creating and managing sales territories? What changes came with SAP CRM 7.0 and the latest enhancement packages? Christian Matz: Hi Amy, The biggest change with territory management was changing from attribute-based territory assignment to rule-based. Also the SAP provided additional maintenance functions, such as reports to discover gaps in the territories where introduced. Plus TM was integrated into other CRM functionality, such as Claims & Funds Management. acanella: Hi Christian, Is it possible use the merge functionality with territories that have been created in the past and are already assigned to accounts? Can you clarify it there are time limits and/or relationships that have been already created, that in such case can prevent the normal working of the merge territories functionality? Is there any prerequisite for merging territories? Thanks in advance, AndreA Christian Matz: Hi AndreA, One way this is typically handled is to expire/delimit the existing rule and create new ones with the adjusted territory assignment. Ideally you do this well in advance, so that all changes happen on a defined (and communicated) date in the future. So far I have not come across anything that would prevent this process from working. LuzGon: Hello everyone, Here are our questions: 1. Does the new Territory Management functionality allows to reactivate the territory nodes&acute;s validity in order to reuse them? Currently, this is not possible when a node is deleted or it is expired and you can&acute;t use it again. 2. Does the new version contain new scenarios with security authorization checks using territory management? Do the current scenarios (CRM 7.0) stay without changes in their security authority checks? 3.Do you have detailed information regarding of the new reports? Thank you for your help, Best Regards, Luz Gonzalez Christian Matz: Hello Luz, Regarding q1: this is also the last functionality I have seen - you cannot reactivate territories that have been expired. What you can do, assuming you have only expired the rule, but not the node itself, is to create a new rule for this node. LuzGon: Thank you Christian, We don&acute;t use rules in our business scenarios, so we will review your recommendation. Anyway, it might not be useful for our business case. Christian Matz: Hello Luz, I was just reviewing this in our system, using territories without rules, trying to expire and reactivating them. The CRM system does not let me enter dates in the past, but for expiration dates in the future I was able to change them again afterwards. Can I assume the nodes you are talking about have been activated for a past date? Christian Matz: Hello Luz, Regarding q2: Comparing CRM 7.0 with the subsequent enhancement packs, there haven't been a lot of changes when it comes to authorizations/security, especially when it comes to TM. Any PFCG roles or ACE rules that have been created with CRM 7.0 will also work when adding the enhancement packs. Regarding q3: The reports are not visible by default, and can be activated e.g. through Solution Manager. Some information about their functionality can be found here : Let me know if you need additional details. Dave Hannon: Christian, Thanks for taking our questions. I'm curious about the benefits you have seen with the business rules-based territory definitions vs. the prior method. It looks a bit more streamlined in the demos I've watched but are there limitations to it? Thanks, Dave Christian Matz: Hello Dave, I have seen both: customer being positive about the rule based approach and others being less so. The new approach definitely provides a lot of flexibility, and for those familiar with BRFplus it is even easier. Also being able to define exception more easily is a great plus. One limitation I have seen is that customers, who have been using TM prior to CRM 7.0 and who have build their own functionality e.g. to read from the TM attribute tables directly. Now, with BRFplus, you have to use the respective APIs, and there is rework. Another limitation I have seen is that the number of rules that can be assign to one node is limited. However SAP does provide a fix to overcome this limitation if needed. Amy Thistle : From your discussions with attendees and customers, do you have any advice on avoiding potential pain points when building your first sales territory structures? Christian Matz: Hello Amy That's a tough one, and also one I am being asked a lot. I guess one important thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the way rules are being created. For instance, because of BRFplus, you cannot keep changing your rules constantly to test things out, since you expire rules and don't delete them. So you cannot make changes effective today multiple times. Also I recommend thinking about what you really want to represent. Setting up TM is easy, doing mass-changes less so. Amy Thistle: Thanks to all who followed the discussion today! A transcript of all the questions will be available here in the CRM Forum and posted on Insider Learning Network. For more CRM advice, don&rsquo;t miss our past podcasts with Christian on CRM 7.0 adoption. For those of you who registered for today&rsquo;s Q&A, you also were able to get a sampling from one of Christian&rsquo;s terrific sessions at CRM 2013 . Finally, I want to thank Christian Matz of ecenta for taking the time to join us today. Thank you, Christian!Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:54:00 GMTTips for SAP GRC audits: Q&A with GRC 2013 speaker Marc Jackson (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/April/Tips-for-SAP-GRC-audits-QA-with-GRC-2013-speaker-Marc-Jackson-transcript
In his session at GRC 2013 , compliance and security Marc Jackson makes the case for auditing your SAP GRC systems &ndash; something not to be overlooked in your system audits. In a recent online Q&A on Insider Learning Network, Turnkey Consulting's Marc Jackson took questions on GRC audits, useful transactions and tools, auditing performance and transport paths, the affect of the ABAP stack now in release 10.0, Firefighter audits, and other topics. Read the Q&A in our Compliance Forum , or review our edited transcript here: Matt Moore, GRC 2013: Welcome to today's forum on strategies and tools to audit your SAP GRC system. I&rsquo;m pleased that we have Marc Jackson from Turnkey Consulting here to take your questions. Marc is a Manager with Turnkey and is responsible for delivering and developing their Audit and Risk Management services. Marc will also be speaking at GRC 2013 in Amsterdam in June on the topics of auditing GRC systems, AB&C compliance, and SoD management. Welcome,...Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:51:00 GMTBoost Your Data Archiving Strategy with SAP Solution Manager's Data Volume Management (DVM): Q&A with Michael Pytel (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/April/Boost-Your-Data-Archiving-Strategy-with-SAP-Solution-Managers-Data-Volume-Management-DVM-QA-with-Mic
T he Data Volume Management functionality of SAP Solution Manager is "an underappreciated tool," according to Michael Pytel of NIMBL , and SAP Solution Manager 7.1 brings "drastically improved" features. But what does that mean for customers? To answer this question,we recently moderated a Q&A with Michael that covered the performance and analysis benefits of DVM, the latest features and functionality, how to use information gleaned from DVM to determine the value of an archiving project, the difference between ADK and DVM, implementation and configuration considerations, and more. You can read the full text of the Q&A in Insider Learning Network's IT Forum, or read our edited transcript here. And don&rsquo;tm miss Michael at the SAP Solution Manager Seminar later this year. Molly Folan, SAPinsider Events Welcome to today's SAP Solution Manager Forum. For the next hour, NIMBL 's Michael Pytel will answer questions on SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and the Data Volume Management (DVM) wor...Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:55:00 GMTBuilding an HR Mobile Strategy with the Right Apps: A Q&A with Jeremy Masters (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/April/Building-an-HR-Mobile-Strategy-with-the-Right-Apps-A-QA-with-Jeremy-Masters-transcript
With an array of options available for mobile delivery of SAP and SuccessFactors applications, where do you start? To help you answer this question, I ecently moderated a Q&A with HR expert Jeremy Masters of Worklogix that covered the currently available mobile solutions for HR, security issues, technical prerequisites, licensing considerations, deployment options, and more. You can read the full text of the Q&A in Insider Learning Network's HR Forum, or read our edited transcript here. You can also catch Jeremy at the HR 2013 events in Amsterdam and Singapore . Amy Thistle, HR 2013: Welcome to today's HR Forum with Jeremy Masters on mobility with SAP HCM and SuccessFactors. Jeremy is an SAPexperts advisor, SAP PRESS auth or, and frequent speaker at our SAPinsider HR conferences , and he'll also be presenting sessions at our next HR 2013 events in Amsterdam and Singapore . Jeremy will be monitoring - and posting his answers in - the HR Discussion Forum thread for the next hour. Wel...Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:08:00 GMTThe latest on HR forms for SAP: Q&A with Brandon Toombs & Justin Morgalis, authors of SAP ERP HCM Processes & Forms (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/March/The-latest-on-HR-forms-for-SAP-QA-with-Brandon-Toombs-Justin-Morgalis-authors-of-SAP-ERP-HCM-Proces
SAP HCM forms creation has changed dramatically with the release of SAP ERP 6.0 EHP6, HR Renewal 1.0, and the new Floor Plan Manager (FPM). How can you prepare for the latest options for forms development and workflow with HCM Processes and Forms? Brandon Toombs and Justin Morgalis, authors of the SAP PRESS book SAP ERP HCM Processes and Forms answered questions posted by our members on March 20 in the HR Forum discussion thread. M.S. Hein, editor of SAPexperts&rsquo; HR Hub, moderated the discussion. Review the full thread in the HR Forum, or read our edited transcript here: M.S. Hein: Welcome to today&rsquo;s HR Forum on HCM Processes & Forms. I&rsquo;m pleased to be joined today by Justin Morgalis and Brandon Toombs, authors of the SAP PRESS book SAP ERP HCM Processes and Forms &ndash; and Brandon is also recently b ack from our HR 2013 event in Las Vegas. Today, they will review the discussion thread for the next hour and posting answers to your P&F questions. They will post th...Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:44:00 GMTTips on GRC 10.0 implementation & maintenance: Technical advice from Deloitte's Kurt Hollis (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/March/Tips-on-GRC-10-dot-0-implementation-maintenance-Technical-advice-from-Deloittes-Kurt-Hollis-QA-tran
How can you prepare now for optimal SAP GRC 10.0 performance, and what steps can you take to prevent problems post-rollout for your GRC 10.0 landscape? GRC 2013 speaker and Deloitte expert Kurt Hollis took questions on March 7 in our Compliance Forum discussion thread, moderated by Matt Moore, conference producer, GRC 2013 . You can view the full discussion in the Forum archives here, or read our edited transcript. Matt Moore, GRC 2013: Welcome to today's forum with GRC expert and GRC 2013 speaker Kurt Hollis for his technical advice on SAP solutions for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) 10.0. This is a great opportunity to ask Kurt your technical questions on implementing GRC 10.0 and maintaining the system after go-live. Kurt is a compliance expert, a featured speaker at our GRC conferences and a manager at Deloitte Consulting, LLP in the SAP Solutions Network. Welcome, Kurt, and thanks very much for joining us today! Kurt Hollis: Hello to everyone joining today discussion....Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:08:00 GMTQ&A with Dr. Bjarne Berg on using BW with SAP HANA (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/March/QA-with-Dr-dot-Bjarne-Berg-on-using-BW-with-SAP-HANA-transcript
<p>How do you properly prepare your SAP NetWeaver BWsystems for an SAP HANA migration? What specific checks, tools, and sizing techniques can help? Dr. Bjarne Berg, a speaker at BI 2013 and co-author of <em>SAP HANA: An Introduction</em> , took questions from his readers.&nbsp;</p>Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:14:00 GMTTips & best practices for currency translation in SAP GL from Rohana Gunawardena (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/February/Tips-best-practices-for-currency-translation-in-SAP-GL-from-Rohana-Gunawardena-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with on currency translation in SAP General Ledger with Rohana Gunawardena of Quality Systems & Software. Rohana took questions on topics he&rsquo;ll be covering at one of his upcoming Financials 2012 session in Milan &ndash; including group currency vs. company currency, adding local currency codes, delta valuations to replace FC valuation functions, best practices for source currency options,and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Rohana's responses in the HR Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. NOTE Rohana will again be speaking at this year's Financials conference and will also take your questions online in a pre-conference Q&A on Controlling in SAP ERP Financials. For more details, visit our Financials Forum to join in. Allison Martin (moderator): Thank you for joining us today! In this one-hour forum, we invite you to ask your questions on currency translation with SAP. I&rsquo;m very happy...Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:46:00 GMTPreparing for SAP CRM mobile sales: Q&A on mobile CRM with Sandeep Raina of Fujitsu America (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/February/Preparing-for-SAP-CRM-mobile-sales-QA-on-mobile-CRM-with-Sandeep-Raina-of-Fujitsu-America-transcript
How can your organization prepare to deliver SAP CRM to your mobile sales team? What changes should you expect to see in CRM mobile sales deployments in terms of implementation effort, data management and look & feel? I recently moderated a Q&A with CRM 2013 speaker and Fujitsu America consultant Sandeep Raina on configuring and customizing SAP CRM mobile sales. Sandeep took questions in an exclusive, one-hour Q&A in the CRM Forum moderated on February 5. He shared his advice on topics such as authorizations, integration with SAP CRM Sales Contacts, pricing conditions, SAP NetWeaver Mobile, SUP, performance, pipeline management and other topics. Follow the full discussion thread in the CRM Forum , or read our edited transcript here: Amy Thistle, CRM 2013: Welcome to today's forum on SAP CRM mobile sales. Thank you for joining us today! I&rsquo;d first like to welcome Sandeep Raina of Fujitsu America. Today&rsquo;s Q&A topic is based on Sandeep&rsquo;s upcoming CRM 2012 session &ldq...Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:59:00 GMTTips & advice on improving cash flow forecasting & liquidity planning: Q&A with SAP treasury expert Moussa Soukal (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/February/Tips-advice-on-improving-cash-flow-forecasting-liquidity-planning-QA-with-SAP-treasury-expert-Mous
Accurate cash flow forecasts &ndash; even two or three months out - are elusive for many companies. Challenges range from data inaccuracies, to technical issues and integration problems, to poorly devised processes. What are best practices to sidestep these issues, and how can SAP treasury functionality help you more accurately pinpoint your company&rsquo;s future cash position? In this Q&A moderated by A llison Martin of Financials 2013 with conference speaker and Treasury expert Moussa Soukal of Hanse Orga . On January 31, Moussa took questions here for the hour in the Financials Forum thread on topics he'll be discussing at his Financials 2013 session , such as: - What are best practices for implementing a standardized format for tracking changes to cash flow forecasts? - How can we avoid errors due to country-specific data formats and multilingual systems? - What are best practices for avoiding integration issues with subsidiaries using different ERP systems? - What...Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:32:00 GMTGoing mobile with SAP Solution Manager 7.1: Q&A with Michael Pytel (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/January/Going-mobile-with-SAP-Solution-Manager-7-dot-1-QA-with-Michael-Pytel-transcript
Where do mobile delivery make sense for your IT support team, and where and how does SAP Solution Manager 7.1 deliver? SAP Solution Manager expert Michael Pytel o f NIMBL recently took questions on SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and IT mobile support in a January 29 forum. We covered topics like mobile solutions for technical operations and change request management solutions, support for Android and iOS devices, as well as requirements and SAP NetWeaver Gateway configuration. It was a very quick preview of his upcoming Admin & Infrastructure Conference in Las Vegas -where Michael will give a detailed session on this same topic. For the full discussion, read the thread in the IT forum, or our edited version below. Bridget Kotelly : Welcome Michael! And thanks to everyone joining us for today&rsquo;s Forum on SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and our special topic today, mobile IT support, with Solution Manager expert and consultant Michael Pytel. Michael Pytel : Looking forward to answering every...Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:39:00 GMTQ&A with Jeremy Masters on talent management deployment options, SAP & SuccessFactors (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2013/January/QA-with-Jeremy-Masters-on-talent-management-deployment-options-SAP-SuccessFactors-transcript
HR 2013 conference producer Amy Thistle recently moderated a Q&A with SAP HCM expert Jeremy Masters in Insider Learning Network&rsquo;s HR Forum. The topic? Talent Management and current and future deployment options. &lsquo; You can review the full Q&A in the HR Forum, or read our edited transcript here. Jeremy will be presenting on this topic during a special three-hour Jumpstart session at HR 2013 on February 25 &ndash; and you can catch him in Las Vegas throughout this year&rsquo;s HR 2013 event. Amy Thistle: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum! I&rsquo;m pleased to have Jeremy Masters of Worklogix &ndash; and a speaker at HR 2013 next month &ndash; join us again to take your questions here in the HR Forum. Today&rsquo;s topic for the next hour: talent management and new deployments options from both SAP & SuccessFactors. Today, Jeremy will answer questions in the thread for the next hour, and share a tip or two from his upcoming session in Las Vegas at HR 2013 on this same topic &n...Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:01:00 GMTHow ABAP affects BW performance: Tips from Joerg Boeke & Raymond Busher (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/December/How-ABAP-affects-BW-performance-Tips-from-Joerg-Boeke-Raymond-Busher-QA-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with BI experts Joerg Boeke and Raymond Busher of BIAnalyst on tuning ABAP to improve BW performance. Joerg and Raymond took questions on transformations, maximizing process chain performance, speeding up tRFC processing, managing Shared Object Memory, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Joerg and Raymond's responses in the BI/BW Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Bridget Kotelly, BI 2013 (moderator): Welcome to today's BI/BW Forum! We're looking forward to a great discussion today on both ABAP and BW. Thanks to consultants and BI experts Joerg Boeke & Raymond Busher of BIAnalyst for joining us today. Both Joerg and Raymond will be here for the hour, posting their answers to your questions about optimizing your ABAP code to enhance BW performance. Joerg has been a speaker at SAPinsider's annual BI conferences with sessions on BW implementation and performance tuning. Today, his colleague at...Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:44:00 GMTTighten internal controls with CCM: SAP GRC Forum with Carlos Jaimes & Marc Jacksonhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/December/Tighten-internal-controls-with-CCM-SAP-GRC-Forum-with-Carlos-Jaimes-Marc-Jackson
Where does automation of internal controls make sense, and how can you integrate controls monitoring into your finance and other SAP ERP processes? Carlos Jaimes and Marc Jackson of Turnkey Consulting took questions in a recent GRC forum on Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM), SAP Process Control, and options for reporting and automation, moderated by Matt Moore, conference producer for SAPinsider&rsquo;s GRC 2013 conference. Review the full archived Forum , or read the edited transcript below: Matt Moore, GRC 2013: Welcome to today's forum on Process Control and Continuous Control Monitoring. Taking your questions today are two experts from Turnkey Consulting : Carlos Jaimes and Marc Jackson. Carlos and Marc will be taking your questions on CCM for finance and other SAP processes. Today&rsquo;s forum is the latest in a series of GRC Q&As, podcasts, and webinars we&rsquo;ll be doing with Turnkey Consulting experts. Carlos and Marc, Thanks for joining us today. Carlos, I know your...Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:11:00 GMTESS & MSS without the portal? SAP HCM advice from Jeremy Masters (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/November/ESS-MSS-without-the-portal-SAP-HCM-advice-from-Jeremy-Masters-QA-transcript
Jeremy Masters of Worklogix recently took questions in one of our live online HR Forums to chat with you about ESS & MSS, SAP NetWeaver and preview his upcoming ESS & MSS sessions at HR 2013. Topics covered in this Forum include OADP, Launchpad, migration challenges, HR Renewal, running on NWBC, delegation capabilities, key steps in EHP updates, implementation timelines, and other topics. You can review the entire thread in the HR Forum, or read our edited version below. And please join Jeremy and me on January 23 for his next Q&A on Talent Management, and then in-person in February at HR 2013 in Las Vegas. Amy Thistle: Welcome to today&rsquo;s HR Forum &ndash; your chance to ask Jeremy Masters of Worklogix your SAP HCM self-services questions. Jeremy is an SAPexperts advisor, SAP PRESS author and frequent speaker at our SAPinsider HR conferences , presenting in the US, Europe, and most recently in Singapore. At the upcoming US HR 2013 conference this February, Jeremy will present...Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:03:00 GMTMichael Koch on customizing SAP Sales and Distribution with ABAP (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/November/Michael-Koch-on-customizing-SAP-Sales-and-Distribution-with-ABAP-QA-transcript
SAP mentor Michael Koch (@pixelbase) recently took questions in our SCM forum on ABAP techniques for customing SAP Sales and Distribution (SD). In this forum, moderated on November 8 by SAPexperts editor Antoine Cadot-Wood (@antoineWIS) , Michael answered questions on topics such as adding custom fields and tabs to sales order headers, as well as pricing conditions, APO checks, and pop-up messages. You can review all the posts on the SCM Forum page , or read our edited transcript from the Forum discussion here: Antoine Cadot-Wood: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum! Thanks for joining us today, and I&rsquo;m delighted to have Michael Koch here, taking questions today on using ABAP to enhance your Sales & Distribution processes. Michael Koch is an SAP mentor, consultant, and author of the new book from SAP PRESS: ABAP Development for Sales and Distribution in SAP: Exits, BAdIs and Enhancements . Today, he&rsquo;s taking your questions on this same topic. Michael, welcome! I have some qu...Tue, 13 Nov 2012 02:40:00 GMTSAP HANA integration, performance & what's next: Q&A with Dr. Bjarne Berg & Penny Silvia (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/October/SAP-HANA-integration-performance-whats-next-QA-with-Dr-dot-Bjarne-Berg-Penny-Silvia-transcript
BI experts Dr. Bjarne Berg of Comerit & Penny Silvia of IBM recently took questions in their second forum on HANA. The first one was back in July, pre-implementation of their joint HANA implementation, and they held their followup Q&A on October 26, now that the ComeritLabs HANA rollout is complete. Molly Folan, producer of SAPinsider's HANA Seminar and the Xcelsius Dashboards Bootcamp , recently moderated this Q&A with Dr. Berg and Penny Silvia, authors of the new SAP PRESS book SAP HANA: An Introduction . Penny and Berg responded to your technical implementation, integration and performance questions.You can view the entire archived thread in our BI-BW Forum, or read our edited transcript here: Molly Folan: Penny and Dr. Berg - thanks so much for joining! I think everyone would be very interested in hearing an update on your HANA implementation, if you wouldn't mind discussing! Just a few notes on the experience of these two experts who have joined us today... ComeritLabs recently collaborated with IBM on testing, development, and benchmarking SAP HANA for BW solutions and are actively using their HANA implementation now. . Dr. Berg: The HANA system we used in our book is now completed and I am now working with 5 companies on their HANA implementations. Two are IBM based HW, one is on Fujitsu's hardware, and two are using Dell's 910R box. Some are quite interesting and will have over 40Tb of raw data with a project of over 18 months, while another is only 500Gb (raw data) and the client is attempting to do as much as they can themselves in only 6 weeks. So, HANA looks like it is being deployed quite rapidly this fall... PavanVasudevan: I have now received the book SAP HANA: An Introduction , from SAP Press and read through few chapters. Thanks for the comprehensive coverage of all the topics related to HANA. My question is: What kind of performance improvement can be seen with the Accelerator scenario? For example, with CO-PA Accelerator, since the logic is still in SAP Application Layer (or SAP AS)? Is it 2x or 3x or more? Is there a need for tuning on the ECC system for this scenario? Dr. Berg: Hi Pravan, The performance depends a bit on the logic you are using on the Accelerator. The calculation engine is basically inside HANA, so that is much faster (as well as the I/Os). There is still an application layer, but it is mainly for graphical presentation, connectivity and app logic. So, we may see 5-20x faster access depending on number of value fields, number of COPA records, and the query design (filtering and conditioning). For the ECC environment, there are minimal changes needed unless you are having a very high number of records, complexity and/or poor system performance already. Thanks, Dr. Berg Dibakar : Questions: 1. HANA sizing is done on the primary memory required for the data. My question is how do we size for concurrent users in HANA? 2. What is the failover architecture in HANA? How should we plan for continuity in case of hardware or software failure? Thanks, Dibakar Bhattacharyya Deloitte Dr. Berg: Hi Dibakar, There are 3 ways to get some sizing numbers: Method 1: You can look at SAP's T-Shirt sizing model to get some basic ideas. Method 2: You can use a rule-of-thumb for preliminary sizing. This include RAM = (data footprint /5) *2; 1 x RAM for log files on disk; 4 x RAM for persistence area; 0.2 CPU cores per active user. Method 3: You can use the bottom-up detailed HANA sizing in SAP's Quick Sizer for HANA. There are 3 versions, but for BW on HANA, you also get some programs you run on your existing HANA system to get detailed input for the footprint (table-4 in the Quick Sizer). So, start from the top and then refine your estimates by Methods 1 and 2 and then do it properly with Method 3. This is detailed with step-by-step instructions in our HANA book on pages 121-129. For the continuity for HANA, there is a difference between Disaster Recovery and High-availability (HA was available as of 6 months ago). This is a very complex area that we cover on page 403 and SAP has issued more details on this topic in the HANA admin guide, but it is basically creating up to 3 standby name servers. The active one of these is assigned the master index server and a statistics server and if the active name server fails the other standby server kicks in. You can also create groups of failover systems for each host (faster restores). So, again a very long topic that can be 2-3 sessions at TechEd... Almost forgot: SP5 contains updates for the High-Availability for HANA Dr. Berg M.S. Hein: Hi Dr. Berg and Penny. I have some questions. We're getting questions about using a Rapid Deployment Solution or full-blown HANA implementation. How do you compare the two? How should we advise on which one will meet the project's needs? Thanks. Dr. Berg: I am going to let Penny answer this. (She wrote the RDS appendices in our book). Penny Silvia: The RDSs are a good option for those who are looking for a very specific 'point' solution and are able to accept that solution as-is. The good thing about the RDSs is that they are fixed price - but that also means they are fixed scope. Like many other things - the devil is in the details. You have to assess how much customization will be necessary to have these meet your goals - or if you are able to live with something that is 'close enough'. They are ALWAYS worth looking at! Zahir Malpekar: Hi Dr. Berg and Penny Silvia, 1. How do we decide on SAP HANA version & what points to be consider for selection? 2. When doing implementation SAP BW on HANA for easy integration, please let me know the best practice to follow? Dr. Berg: Hi Zahir, There are basically 3 editions of HANA: the platform edition, the enterprise edition, and the extended enterprise edition. You can also buy BW-specific licensing. The differences between editions are mainly the ETL components -- for example, with the enterprise edition you get BOBJ Data Services, DXT and SLT (not included in the platform edition). While in the extended edition, you also get Sybase replication server, Load controller (LC) and ASE as well. We outline the differences of each of these editions on page 130 and also show all subcomponents in a table on page 131 (if you are looking for more details). For the implementation, it is hard to determine best practices. Today I worked with a company where their hardware vendor shipped an empty box with nothing in it. Then the hardware vendors sent a person to install HANA and left the client by themselves to install BW, set up servers and connectivity. Another hardware vendor takes a much more comprehensive approach and installs all software at their site and ships a complete box with all software components installed (I like this better).... If we do the latter, I prefer a clean install and start all new development in the new HANA box and leave the old 'stuff' back in the old BW system. This allows me to keep the old system, while gradually migrate new content to HANA either as new development, or moving old config and then redesign it. The tasks are then typically: 1. Conduct HANA health checks for connectivity, install, disk and memory allocations 2. Configure HANA system with setup for privileges and access rules 3. Configure Monitoring alerts, and administrative notifications 4. Configure SLT for extraction and/or Data services for non-SAP extraction jobs (incl. table setup and job scheduling) 5. Covert key data stores and InfoCubes to HANA optimized InfoCubes and DSOs 6. Setup users and roles in HANA system 7. Setting up admin console and client customization (i.e. templates, background saves, logs, catalog objects retrieved, error dialogs, values formatting etc.) 8. Adding systems for and interfaces for HANA in/outbound data (JDBC, ODBC, BICS, XML or DBSQL) 9. Setting up memory and disk monitoring jobs for HANA Administration 10. Install permanent licensing keys and cutover for HANA production environment 11. Set up automated updating of HANA studio and/or appliance (rules) and testing of Update manager 12. Setup authentication server and/or LDAP, Kerberos, SAP authorization, assign admin privileges and roles, 13. Conduct HANA admin workshops and knowledge transfer to HANA administrators 14. Create first BW application (extraction, DSO, IC, MP, DTP, BEx Query and process chain) to test HANA appliance As you see, I get this question often :-) Dr. Berg GopalakrishnanVenkatachalam: Hi Dr.Berg and Penny Silvia, Can MDX be used by third-party reporting tools to report on HANA data? Dr. Berg: Hi Gopalakrishnan, Not yet. The current version is MDX for MS 2010. So it is not a generic version, but MS specific for MS query and MS Excel integration. We show you how to do this step-by-step with screenshots on pages 115-163 in the book if you are interested. Dr. Berg PaulArevalo: Hi Dr. Berg, my question is: Does SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA provide &ldquo;Real-Time Analytics Capabilities&rdquo; or does the data latency still reflect the time the data was loaded into SAP BW? Paul Arevalo Dr. Berg: Hi Paul, There are several ways to get this: 1. Increased data feeds with SLT or LC. Since data activation and loads are much faster, you can push this to 'near-time' data warehousing with minimal latency. 2. HybridProviders (BW 7.3 feature) with querying directly for the current records in ECC and old records in HANA/BW 3. Deamon updates (still available) 4. ECC 6.0 SP8 has BEx query designer and you can pick it up directly in BOBJ 5. Virtual/remote cubes in BW with querying directly as a through-pull to the ERP box. SO lots of options, but I strongly prefer #1 if you have invested in HANA already... Dr. Berg GopalakrishnanVenkatachalam: Dr.Berg, By running BW on HANA and using Real Time Data Acquisition (RDA) extractors, can we achieve the near real-time reporting on SAP data? Does HANA improve this process in any way? Or running SAP BW and SAP ECC on the same HANA box the only alternative to achieve real-time reporting in a multi-source environment? Dr. Berg: Ooops! Forgot RDA. Yes, that is an option as well. The process that changes for HANA is basically the activation. With HANA the SID generation is done in-memory and the lengthy and slow process of accessing the NRIV table is extremely fast. I have seen load/activation performance as high as 36% faster. So this is significant if you are having 1+ hour activation times. Even smaller data loads benefits greatly from it and perhaps WO DSOs are no longer needed and you can build reportable DSOs in the future instead (what happens with ICs are still a questions to be answered by 'best practice'). Dr. Berg Molly Folan: Hi Experts --I've received lots of questions from customers on the requirements for building a business case for HANA. Could you speak to a few of the key factors that should be considering in this process? Dr. Berg: The business case can be built around: 1. Server simplification (multiple app and DB servers) 2. Costs savings for DB licensing as well as faster deployment (may not need as many layers for DSOs and ICs as well as aggregates). 3. Saved labor hours by business. I have a client that had an average of 9,500 reports run every week at over 67 second average runtime. With HANA we expect this to take 10 seconds or less. That is 150 hours waiting for reports each week. If we have a labor costs of $28/hr, that alone is a saving of over $219,000. 4. New capabilities (whatever you are planning to do) 5. Performance tunings savings (less need for that) We also outline 4 more business case examples in detail in our book in chapter 4. Just some ideas, Dr. Berg Zahir Malpekar: Hi, 1. HANA's implementation for column-based tables has a few limitations, like performance problems, when it comes to joining tables stored in a "column store". What steps should be taken when such a scenario occurs? 2. HANA has its own user authorization database, but doesn't have a built-in ability to read or use the security database of other SAP products. That means that besides having to transport the DATA to the HANA system, you will probably have to find a way to copy or recreate the user authorization database in HANA. Dr. Berg: Hi Zahir, For question 1: Column data stores are great for search, analysis, calculation, smaller data footprint and faster data access than row data stores. But it can have lower performance than row data stores when working with joins. Some of this is due to the need to link to the individual data point that has been compressed. It is important to keep this in perspective -- the join is still dramatically faster than a traditional database like Oracle, but in some case not as fast as a row data store (depends a bit on the number of records). We discuss much of this in the advanced HANA modeler chapter (chapter 8) in the HANA book and go into some details on what can be done to minimize the impacts (i.e. partitioning). But it is still 'bloody' fast! ;-) For question 2: There are some workarounds to upload the roles. For most of what we are doing now, we interface with SAP security, Kerboros, LDAP, or we manually recreate the roles and priveledges in HANA admin console... Richard Bremer (Senior RIG Specialist at SAP) has done some presentations on HANA security and I know he will deliver another session on HANA security at TechEd in Madrid next week. You might download his deck for the possible workaround, but my team typically keeps this in another server, or more commonly recreate it in HANA as part of our install project. Dr. Berg Philip Neijenhuys: Hi Dr. Berg, We have tried to deploy a BWA solution, but the BWA indexes were not used in most of our queries. The reason was extensive use of display attributes from the master data. We are planning a proof of concept with BW on HANA to find out if our queries do get the needed acceleration. Can you comment on this and what we need to do to make the PoC a success? Thanks! Dr. Berg: Hi Philip. FYI: - BWA will not be used if a query has a key figure set to NO1, NO2, or NOP (no aggregation). - Some could have used the ABAP program &lsquo;&rsquo;ZZ_SET_QUERY_NOHPA_FLAG to turn off BWA access for single queries in the RSRREPDIR table (mean people :-) - Some could have turned off the BWA index query availability for InfoCubes through the transaction &ldquo;RSDDBIAMON2.&rdquo; - Nor can you use the exception aggregation for single key figures in SAP BW Accelerator if it uses: Virtual key figures /p pTue, 30 Oct 2012 19:58:00 GMTWhat Brazil Nota Fiscal compliance means for SAP e-invoicing, logistics & accounting (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/October/What-Brazil-Nota-Fiscal-compliance-means-for-SAP-e-invoicing-logistics-accounting-QA-transcript
Brazil &rsquo;s Nota Fiscal eletr&ocirc;nica (NF-e) regulations clearly have had impact beyond technical e-invoicing processes, up and down the supply chain. As an SAP customer, what technical and strategic questions do you still have about NF-e, and what are your next steps to ensure compliance? My colleague Gary Byrne of SAPexperts recently moderated an online Discussion Forum on Brazil Nota Fiscal compliance on October 11 here in the Compliance Forum. E-invoicing experts Steve Sprague and Jason Jones of Invoiceware International answered questions on chief challenges and best practices & skills needed to assure NF-e compliance. To follow the discussion, you can review the full, archived discussion forum or read this edited transcript here: Gary Byrne, SAPexperts: Welcome to today's forum on Nota Fiscal with Steve Sprague and Jason Jones of Invoiceware International. Steve and Jason are experts on Nota Fiscal and e-invoicing requirements in Latin American and around the world. Th...Wed, 17 Oct 2012 08:15:00 GMTSAP BPC 10.0 Q&A with BPC Bootcamp experts Scott Cairncross, David Dixon & Jarrett Bialek (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/October/SAP-BPC-10-dot-0-QA-with-BPC-Bootcamp-experts-Scott-Cairncross-David-Dixon-Jarrett-Bialek-transcrip
How is BPC 10.0 changing the way your analysts & finance teams handle annual budgets, forecasts, and consolidation? My colleague Allison Martin at BPC Bootcamp recently moderated a Q&A here in Insider Learing Network&rsquo;s Financials Forum on SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC). On October 3, some of our top BPC experts at this month&rsquo;s upcoming BPC Bootcamp &ndash; Scott Cairncross , David Dixon and Jarrett Bialek of TruQua Enteprises &ndash; took an hour to answer your technical questions about BPC 10.0. You can review the forum posts here or read our edited transcript below. Enjoy! Allison Martin, BPC Bootcamp: Welcome to today's forum on BPC 10.0! Today, we have BPC and EPM experts Scott Cairncross, David Dixon and Jarrett Bialek of TruQua Enterprises here to take your questions. Scott, David, and Jarrett are all speaking at our BPC Bootcamp at the end of the month in Las Vegas, and are also regular speakers at our SAPinsider Financials events. These three...Sat, 06 Oct 2012 01:05:00 GMTWhat EHP5 means to your Finance team: Q&A with SAP financials expert Paul Ovigele (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/September/What-EHP5-means-to-your-Finance-team-QA-with-SAP-financials-expert-Paul-Ovigele-transcript
EHP 5 delivers a lot of new functionality &ndash; but what will bring the biggest improvements for your Financials team? I was pleased to have SAP financials expert and Financials 2012 speaker Paul Ovigele join me on September 20 to take your EHP5 questions and get Paul's advice on how to make the most of these updates for your Financials processes. Questions included topics such as enhancements for CO, timeline for EHP implementation, impacts on current FICO processes, profit center reorganization, waiting for EHP6, and skills needed to manage EHP5 installations. Visit the Financials forum to review the entire thread, or read this edited transcript of the questions here: Allison Martin, conference producer, Financials 2012 : Welcome to today's forum! In this one-hour Forum, we invite you to ask your questions on the new functionality in EHP5 and what impact this will have on your Financials teams. Paul Ovigele is an independent consultant & regular speaker at SAPinsider&rsquo;s Fi...Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:11:00 GMTNew workflow in Access Control 10.0 - BRF+ & MSMP: Q&A with SAP GRC expert Simon Persin transcripthttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/September/New-workflow-in-Access-Control-10-dot-0-BRF-MSMP-QA-with-SAP-GRC-expert-Simon-Persin-transcript
I recently moderated a Q&A on SAP Access Control 10.0 workflow with Turnkey Consulting&rsquo;s Simon Persin. There was a lot of discussion on changes to approvals with 10.0 and MSMP and, not surprisingly, a lot of questions about BRF+, an area where we know our GRC 2013 conference attendees have lots of questions. Specifically, Simon took questions on big changes to CAD, access request standard rules, Firefighter ID access, status requests for end users, the challenges of configuring alternate approvers, and skills you&rsquo;ll need with BRF+. If you missed the one-hour Q&A, you can review all the posts in this Q&A, visit Insider Learning Network&rsquo;s Compliance Forum , or read the transcript below. Watch for more in this series of GRC Forums, webinars and podcast in the weeks to come! Matt Moore, conference producer, GRC 2013 : Welcome to today's forum on Access Control 10.0 workflow & automation. I&rsquo;m pleased that we have Simon Persin from Turnkey Consulting here to take...Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:01:00 GMTPreparing for BW 7.3: Q&A with BI experts Joerg Boeke & Raymond Busher (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/September/Preparing-for-BW-7-dot-3-QA-with-BI-experts-Joerg-Boeke-Raymond-Busher-transcript
What are the big performance hits & pitfalls to avoid when making the move to BW 7.3? BI 2012 conference producer Bridget Kotelly recently hosted an exclusive one-hour Q&A on September 13 with BI experts Joerg Boeke and Raymond Busher of BIAnalyst . Joerg & Raymond responded to questions in Insider Learning Network&rsquo;s BI-BW Forum, and topics included authorizations, upgrade paths from 3.x to 7.x, manual vs. automatic repartitioning, upgrading with HANA in mind, emptying delta queues, and general pitfalls to avoid in a 7.3 upgrade. You can review the forum here, or review all the questions in this edited transcript: Bridget Kotelly: Welcome to today&rsquo;s BI/BW Forum. We&rsquo;re looking forward to a great chat on BW upgrades to 7.3 today. Thanks to consultants and BI experts Joerg Boeke & Raymond Busher of BIAnalyst for joining us today in this online Q&A- and for taking your questions during the hour. Joerg has been a speaker at our annual BI conferences with sessions on BW...Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:32:00 GMTWebI best practices, use & adoption: Q&A with Gabe Orthous (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/June/WebI-best-practices-use-adoption-QA-with-Gabe-Orthous-transcript
When and how can you make WebI projects more interactive and anticipate business needs from the start? SAP BusinessObjects expert and BI 2012 speaker Gabe Orthous took questions from members in one-hour live online chat, here in the SAP BusinessObjects Forum on Tuesday, June 26 with my colleague Bridget Kotelly, conference producer for BI 2012 Las Vegas, Milan & the upcoming event in Singapore, 16-18 October 2012. The conversation drifted into some questions on tools and tricks, but Gabe also included some great advice about how to "sell" self-services to your stakeholders and end users. Bridget Kotelly: Welcome to today&rsquo;s SAP BusinessObjects online Forum on WebI design & usability. We&rsquo;re looking forward to some great advice today, and I&rsquo;m delighted to have Gabe Orthous here as our featured expert this hour. For those who don&rsquo;t know Gabe Orthous already, he&rsquo;s a senior development manager for the Business Intelligence group at McKesson Revenue Managemen...Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:51:00 GMTQ&A Transcript: Ginger Gatling, Corrie Brague, and Werner Daehn on SAP Data Serviceshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/June/QA-Transcript-Ginger-Gatling-Corrie-Brague-and-Werner-Daehn-on-SAP-Data-Services
I recently moderated a web forum with SAP's Ginger Gatling , Corrie Brague , and Werner Daehn on improving and monitoring data quality with SAP Data Services. Ginger, Corrie, and Werner took questions on data cleansing support for European standards, using SAP NetWeaver BW vs. SAP Data Services, integration with other SAP applications, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Ginger, Corrie, and Werner's responses in the IT Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Scott Priest (moderator): Welcome to today's Forum on data quality and SAP Data Services. I'm happy to have SAP's Ginger Gatling here, joined by two SAP Data Services gurus -- Corrie Brague and Werner Daehn -- from the new Enterprise Information Management for SAP book from SAP PRESS to answer your questions during the next hour. Ginger is an author for SAP Professional Journal and SAPexperts , and has been a driving force behind this new EIM book. She's joined today by Corrie Brague, Director of Information Quality and Insight (IQI) Product Management for SAP, and Werner Daehn, Product Manager for SAP Data Services and manager of the Data Services wiki on SCN. Welcome, Ginger, Corrie & Werner, and thanks for joining us today! It looks like there are plenty of questions to get started, so we'll get started right away. MaureenCadden: Has SAP come out yet with a version of Data Services that works with Internet Explorer 9? If not, is there an expected date? Corrie Brague: The Data Services (and Information Steward) 4.1 releases, now in Ramp Up, support Internet Explorer version 9. For more information on the Data Services 4.1 Ramp Up program, please visit here . eccard-von-bentivegni: How is the support of legal forms in company names? The desire is to have the most common legal forms of Europe in a table with two or three columns: the abbreviation of the legal form, the whole name (long name) of the legal form, and maybe country of usage (a so-called synonym table for companies). Actually, I could use basically the search_replace-function in a data flow to standardize the legal form of company names like 'AG' for 'Aktiengesellschaft' in Germany, but I have to build my own table with all often-used similar entries to the first one, like 'AG' for 'Aktienges.', 'AG' for 'Aktiengesellsch.', 'AG' for 'Aktiengesell.', etc. Further, if I want to standardize legal forms with several words like 'PLC' for 'Public Limited Company' or 'LLP' for 'Limited Liability Partnership', then I have to use the comparison flag 'SR_STRING' instead of 'SR_WORD' but with the negative effect that it will also change in parts of words, which is mainly for the German language a problem with sometimes very long words, e.g., 'Baumschulenoberaufseherschuhbendel' is changed to 'BSnoberaufseherschuhbendel' if the change is activated from 'Baumschule' to 'BS'. What I want to say is that Data Services works often very fine for US countries but not to some markets from Europe like now in this case. Which data quality support do we have for special requirements from Europe markets like France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.? Maybe I can cover 80% of the requirements with the easy-to-use-functionality of search-replace, which is often acceptable for the first step. But we need a scalable way to increase the solution not by throwing away the whole old stuff and making it new in a complete other much more complicated way. We need an acceptable way to achieve the 100% solution if the customer wants it, maybe after the first step of 80%. What about DQM for SAP solutions, especially to the demand of standardizing company names, also with regard to having better matchings later on in the process? Actually we let the customer alone with this subject in SAP CRM or SAP ERP. The customer itself is responsible to save the company name in his way. And later on we don't match the customer in the matching process because the company names are not enough similar only because of different ways of the writing for the same legal form for the same company. Of course I could make a special solution for each company, but such fundamental problems should be part of the standard solution. The customer is not always willing to pay so much for products if fundamental parts of the product are not covered and must be first developed. It is much more better to say that it must be configured like adding some entries in a table, but saying that it must be programmed is for such cases a negative point in selling this software. Corrie Brague: Great questions. I will try to respond to your questions in order. The shipped Name, Title, and Firm Cleansing Package for usage with the Data Cleanse transform of Data Services includes standards (along with variations of those standards) for Firm or Company names. Our Global Name, Title and Firm Cleansing Package includes support for countries around the globe, including European countries. However, the Cleansing Package does not standardize necessarily on the legal forms of company names. You can however review the SAP supplied standards and extend to meet your better meet your business needs. The Data Cleanse transform goes further than simple search and replace in terms of its logic for parsing and standardization. There are out of the box capabilities for global name, title and firm parsing and standardization as mentioned, along with emails, dates and phones numbers. Additionally, there is also the capability to build custom Cleansing Packages using Cleansing Package Builder (check out tutorials here for more information). Additionally, we have global address cleansing and geocoding capabilities that meet unique requirements and local standards for European countries (e.g. France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc). With our latest Data Services 4.1 release (now in Ramp Up), we achieved La Poste Ratification of our address cleansing capabilities and made several other EMEA focused enhancements to better meet local standards for the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. On the topic of DQM for SAP, currently firm standardization capabilities are not a part of that solution (out of the box). However, this is an item that is being considered for a future release. eccard-von-bentivegni: Question: When is the HANA search functionality available in a match-transform in Data Services? Actually the match transform does not cover the requirements of a lot of customers in Europe. Use case: I have a local customer (assurance) who would like to have better quality with data services. Over 90% of 2 million customers of his assurance are living in the same region and the call center of this assurance is looking first if the calling person is already a customer. Over 50% of the cases the customer doesn't know by mind all digits of the post code where he is living, only the first 2 digits. With the actual matching transform BODS will not find a matching within a couple of seconds and if the call center would enter the wrong post code there is no matching. The consequence is that a new data record will be created which is wrong, ergo with Data Services the customer will get only better quality if the input is already very good and complete. Yes, it's possible to configure it in the way that it is more tolerant but mostly with time performance which is not tolerable by the customer/end user. We need a better (no break keys) and more user friendly transform for matching cases. When will it be available in the future? Corrie Brague: Another great post. The Match transform in SAP Data Services does favor batch match scenarios for duplicate/relationship detection and consolidation scenarios versus a transactional search scenario. You are also correct that you can configure Data Services to be more error tolerant, but the cost can be performance. We are currently exploring both simplification and improved support for search scenarios for our Match transform. And, did you mention HANA&hellip; Would love to validate some concepts with you. If you are interested, please contact me at corrie.brague@sap.com . bradschroeter: We use ECC DQM, which interfaces with DS for customer address standardization and duplicate check. We've recently run into an issue where we're having to do ECC custom code or DS custom code to solve for an issue where DQM cannot control the type of records created in break key table nor control the records sent to DS (see here ). Are there any future plans to solve for this? Corrie Brague: Brad, we are looking into the possibility of addressing this item in an upcoming support pack. We are currently engaged with the SAP BAS team to identify what is the best solution. I would encourage everyone to review/vote on ideas and submit their own product ideas at SAP Idea Place . Here is the direct link for Data Services and the link for Information Steward is here . bradschroeter: What about a DS address cleanse which can calculate time zone? Reference here . Corrie Brague: At this time, there are no current plans to enhance DS Address Cleanse to calculate a time zone. Although we appreciate the idea submission and will actively track this idea for consideration in future releases based on community interest. Brad, it would be useful for context to understand what is the use case for the time zone calculation (what business problem does this feature solve) to be able to better understand the value from your perspective. Please communicate here or with the original Idea Place post. Thanks! bradschroeter: Where can I get details on Match Review (new business user UI to review match results, provide resolution, and set master record) in Information Steward 4.1? Corrie Brague: Match Review is available in the Information Steward 4.1 release currently in Ramp Up (for more information visit the SAP Information Steward 4.1 Ramp-Up Info Page ). To find out more information on Match Review in SAP Information Steward 4.1, check out the 4.1 Documentation (see instructions on how to access here ). petergmk: Hi, I am a BW/BO consultant. In my previous project, I worked together with a group of BODS developers on retrieving G/L transaction data from BW, calculating some highly complex KPI based on the data, and putting the transformed data back into BW via UD Connect for reporting in BEx. We did not think much of BODS but an ETL/programming tool. In this case, can you let me know whether I have overlooked any of the advanced aspects of BODS which could have been applied for other better use? Besides, I just wonder whether you have any real-world examples where BW and the EIM tool suite, particularly BODS, co-exist or they complement each other? Thanks and Regards, Ming Kai Werner Daehn: That's an unpleasant one because you have two solutions - the ETL part of BW and DataServices as ETL tool - which both have their own set of advantages. BW-ETL comes for free, is deeply integrated. And DataServices is way more powerful. Obviously we want to consolidate that but the current distinction is: 1. Source is ERP & Target is BW? No need for DataServices. 2. You have just a few external sources? Still no need to invest in DataServices. 3. You have to cleanse the data and standardize on the values for SAP data and non-SAP data? You have to use DataServices then. 4. You have many external sources to be loaded into BW, preferably with lots of changes? DataServices is just perfect. Taking data out of BW, do calculations outside and put it back, is possible but depends on the calculations a lot. If it is statistics you won't be happy with DataServices, if it is lookups and the such, you would. Ginger Gatling: Also - here is a link that describes the support in Data Services for the BW extractors. Have you looked at the data quality capabilities and text data processing features within Data Services? These are both very robust and add additional capabilities to Data Services. The EIM book has a chapter on the data quality features and a chapter on text data processing. Corrie, who wrote the data quality chapter - is here online. Here is the link to the book . sankolluribobj: Question: When I try to use a Persistent Data store table in a lookup function, I am not able to select a table from Persistent Data store using Lookup_EXT function. I am using Data services 3.2. Werner Daehn: One second, let me try with my version.... Okay, I think I figured out what you missed - you have to save the dataflow to convert the template table to a permanent table and then you can use it. Details: In a persistent cache datastore you cannot import tables - there are none - you can add new template tables only. But as template tables might change their structure constantly, we do not allow lookup_ext to use template tables, just permanent ones. With persistent cache, when you save the dataflow, the table is instantiated as regular object, as permanent table even. Scott Priest (moderator): What SAP Data Services applications support data cleansing and transformation? Corrie Brague: SAP Data Services includes data integration, data quality, and text data processing capabilities. Data Services allows you to integrate, transform, improve, and deliver trusted data to critical business processes across the enterprise for both SAP and non-SAP systems. SAP Data Services data cleansing capabilities include: parsing, standardization, correction, enrichment, matching (de-duplication) and best record consolidation. There are multiple transforms available that support these capabilities, including Global Address Cleanse, US Regulatory Address Cleanse, Data Cleanse (non-address data cleansing), Match and Associate transforms. Basic data transformation capabilities are also available via functions like search and replace or by leveraging look up tables. Additionally, there is an integration provided for data quality management in SAP applications, specifically in SAP ERP, SAP CRM, and SAP Master Data Governance. The embedded solution is called SAP Data Quality Management, version for SAP solutions, and it provides a transparent, out-of-the-box data quality solution within SAP applications. The key capabilities include address cleansing, address enhancements, and duplicate checking. As you enter a new business partner in the SAP application, an immediate check is done to parse names, cleanse the address, and check for duplicates. Ginger Gatling: You can learn more about the transforms in the EIM book and also on the SCN page for Data Services . Scott Priest (moderator): Werner, I know you do a lot of work on SCN, could you post a few links to resources you're involved with there? Werner Daehn: Sure, there are three areas I would like to highlight. The root page of all is this . If you are new to DataServices we have put together a getting started , especially the video sub-page is well received. Actually, so much we should redo it with somebody better looking and of better quality. Anyway, different topic. The EIM Use case is to get ideas when to use what EIM product, to get ideas of what can be done in addition and how. Scott Priest (moderator): What's the timeline to get the data quality piece working, and what skills does the team need? Corrie Brague: The timeline to implement data quality is dependent on the type and complexity of your data. We have blueprints and wizards available to get you started quickly on common cleansing, matching, consolidation and enrichment use cases. We have seen data quality implementations (production ready for real-time, point-of-entry data cleansing via the web) occur in a just over a week. To leverage the data quality transformations in Data Services, the team should be familiar with the core concepts of data quality. Chapter 8 of the Enterprise Information Management with SAP book will help to achieve this. The good news is that Data Quality routines for cleansing and matching are provided out of the box via transformations within Data Services. No more custom programs/scripts for data cleansing/matching. For each transform, there are also transform configurations, which are preconfigured best practices in terms of input fields, output fields, and option configuration for a particular use case or type of data. In addition, Data Services Blueprints are available. A blueprint is a sample SAP Data Services job that is configured with best practices to solve a specific scenario. Each blueprint is an end-to-end job that includes sample data and may be run in the customer environment with only a few modifications. Some jobs include batch data flows and some include real-time data flows; some jobs include party data and some include product data. Data quality jobs include structured data and text data processing jobs include unstructured data. PaulRouthier: Is there a 'Preferred' approach to the use of Data Services when integrating with NW MDM or Master Data Governance (MDG) for Vendors and/or Customers re: Cleansing and de-duping? Corrie Brague: Why yes there is, Paul. There is an integration provided for data quality management in SAP applications, specifically in SAP ERP, SAP CRM, NW MDM and SAP Master Data Governance. The embedded solution is called SAP Data Quality Management, version for SAP solutions, and it provides a transparent, out-of-the-box data quality solution within SAP applications. The key capabilities include address cleansing, address enhancements, and duplicate checking for customer and vendor data domains. For example, as you enter a new business partner, vendor, or customer in the SAP application, an immediate check is done to parse names, cleanse the address, and check for duplicates. For more information, check out these product tutorials . Siddhu: Hi, When I try to save Data Flow in my Designer, I am getting the following error: "Cannot Save the current Model". I am using SAP Data Services 3.2. Thanks Siddhu Werner Daehn: The first answer to that is, it should never happen. Never ever. It means that the textual representation of what you have drawn cannot be parsed again, so it could not read what it wants to save. I haven't seen this error recently, not even in 3.2, but before there had been some hotspots like lookup_ext() and other elements called as new-function-call were not escaped properly or put under quotes because they are reserved words. As it seems you can reproduce it, please send this info to support so we can fix that class of problem entirely. Scott Priest (moderator): Could you provide a little more information about data matching and enrichment? How does that work? Corrie Brague: In terms of data matching, duplicate records often exist in one or more source systems. The goal of matching is to determine whether records refer to the same entity. This involves evaluating how well the individual fields, or attributes, of the records match each other. Data Services Data Quality Management matching capabilities allow you to use various fields for comparisons, to compare records in multiple directions, and then join the intersections. Data quality management employs powerful matching algorithms to account for data entry errors, character transposition, and other data inaccuracies to match records. In terms of data enrichment or enhancement, the out of the box enhancement options in Data Services include: - Providing full international postal information - Assigning longitude and latitude information to records - Assigning geospatial information such as tax jurisdiction identifiers - Assigning gender and prenames Data Services also supports using 3rd party referential data (e.g., demographic data) to enhance records via our matching capabilities. Blueprints are available for some common data content providers. PaulRouthier: Are there any plans to 'beautify' the Match Results achieved in a Data Services Batch job to allow a 'User' to see the match results coming from the Defined Match Rules? Corrie Brague: With the Information Steward 4.1 release, there is a new business user UI to review match conflicts, to provide resolution on those conflicts, and make changes to the master record within a match group. The new Match Review capabilities include task management and status reporting capabilities. Match Review is available in the Information Steward 4.1 release currently in Ramp Up (for more information visit the SAP Information Steward 4.1 Ramp-Up Info Page ). To find out more information on Match Review in SAP Information Steward 4.1, check out the 4.1 Documentation (see instructions on how to access here ). Scott Priest (moderator): Thanks to all who joined is in the Forum today. A digest of all the questions will be available here in the IT Forum and in Insider Learning Network's IT Group . You can find Ginger's contributions to SAPexperts here . Although this Forum is now closed, you can post your own questions at any time in the IT Forum . Simply log in to Insider Learning Network, go to the IT Forum and select the "New Thread" button at the top of the page. For more on data management and SAP's EIM roadmap, you can also listen in on our conversations with Ginger Gatling and EIM for SAP authors, with podcasts from Ginger Gatling on an overview of EIM , Ina Felsheim on data management and EIM , and Andreas Engel on SAP's approach to ECM - all topics covered in detail in the EIM for SAP book . And once again, thanks to SAP's Ginger Gatling , Corrie Brague , and Werner Daehn for taking these questions today. Thank you all for joining us!Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:25:00 GMTMichael Pytel on Solution Manager 7.1, testing, BPCA & TBOMs (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/June/Michael-Pytel-on-Solution-Manager-7-dot-1-testing-BPCA-TBOMs-QA-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with NIMBL 's Michael Pytel on SAP Solution Manager 7.1 support for test management and change impact analysis. Michael took questions on the accuracy of BPCA, using static vs. dynamic TBOMs, new features for BPCA and TBOMs, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Michael's responses in the IT Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Amy Thistle (moderator): Welcome to today's Forum on SAP Solution Manager 7.1, BPCA, and TBOMs with consultant and speaker Michael Pytel . In this one-hour Q&A, post your questions for NIMBL 's Michael Pytel on how 7.1's Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA) and Technical Bill of Materials (TBOMs) can help drive better test management and change impact analysis. Thanks, Michael, for joining us today! Looks like our audience, as usual, is ready to go... so I'll hand this over to you! Kir Chern: Hi Michael, 1. What is the difference between BPCA and CDMC (Custom Developme...Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:40:00 GMTTips on transitioning your sales orders to SAP CRM 7.0: Q&A with CRM expert Michael Debevechttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/June/Tips-on-transitioning-your-sales-orders-to-SAP-CRM-7-dot-0-QA-with-CRM-expert-Michael-Debevec
I recently hosted a moderated forum on Insider Learning Network with CRM expert Michael Debevec, SAP experts author and technical advisor. Michael took questions on moving from SD to CRM 7.0 &ndash; or not! &ndash; how to make that decision and troubleshooting configuration and performance issues. He also gave some advice on using SAP Trade Promotion Management. Review the entire discussion on the Forum page , or read the edited transcript here: Antoine Cadot-Wood : Welcome to today's latest forum on SAP CRM 7.0, sponsored by CRM Expert. Today we&rsquo;re focusing on SD and managing sales orders in 7.0. I&rsquo;d like to welcome consultant Michael Debevec, who will take your questions for the next hour. Mike has written articles for CRM Experts and has been a speaker at the annual SAPinsider CRM conferences. Today&rsquo;s Q&A is based on his CRM 2012 session &ndash; aptly named &ldquo;SD Doesn&rsquo;t Go Away with Your Implementation of SAP CRM: Tips to Guarantee a Smooth Transition and Coexistence Between Systems.&rdquo; Mike, welcome, and thanks for taking these questions today! Sara Andersson: Hello Mike, Is there any restrictions, performance wise, on how many sales order you can have as a follow-up from a Sales contract? Or any maximum recommendation? MichaelDebevec: As far as I know, no. The contract to order linkage is a relationship so that if you are loading associated orders from a contract, only the header information is loaded. On the ECC side, the relationship is via document flow and is a linked list. There should be secondary indices to prevent massive performance issues during a search. Just how many orders are you talking about? Sara Andersson : As a maximum today we have around 1000 sales order connected to one sales contracts. What we are experience is approx 5-10 minutes to open one of thoose kind of contracts. Therefore my question on any recommendation. MichaelDebevec: This is in ECC ? I assume that you have already queried service.sap.com for any performance recommendations? SAP provides a service to analyze the bottlenecks and improve performance. If you have not considered this option, you should do so. In working with SAP in TPM, they have been able to analyze and offer improvements. Performance improves can generally be gained by adding some secondary indices. Often there is a sequential search going on that kills performance. A second area tends to be customer exits - they often are not written with performance in mind. From your other posting, you are using projects, dynamic item pricing and probably resource related billing - all of which are performance hogs. Is there a different way that you can accomplish what you are doing with the contracts that can avoid the links? Sara Andersson : We have fully replicated sales order, existing in both R/3 and CRM. Contracts &oacute;nly exists in CRM. We have and will continue to look for performance recommendations. As you state we are using a lot of functions that we have come to understand are bottlenecks in performance like, DIP, RRB as well as we have some customer exits. For sure we are discussing on changing our scenario on how we are today linking. Thank you for good answers! MichaelDebevec: One thought (since it is what I have been doing a lot of recently): If the main use of the contracts is for pricing (rather than volume commitments), consider using trade management. You could record your special pricing and forecast your expected volumes for demand management. However, if you are doing service and resource billing this is not a solution. MichaelDebevec: Some other general thoughts on performance. Using traces can identify where most of the effort is occuring. Writing and reading from memory tends to be a performance hit - perhaps you can use static classes to save and access data rather than memory writes. Pricing is always a big performance hit. Keep the number of accesses small. If you use customer hierarchies, make sure that your accesses reflect how many hierarchy levels you maintain. If you have special pricing for classes of customers - isolate their condition types or accesses - you can use reference condition types so that your master data maintenance doesn't change but the number of accesses that you use in determine the price does change. Check your own code - SAP has some good tools in the work bench to analyze the performance of your code. See if you can split contracts - copy it from month to month and then have a field that links the copies together for a unified view for reporting. You may be able to do things in BI for reporting that allows you to not link data so closely in you execution system - this is worth analyzing and pursuing. Antoine Cadot-Wood: Hi Mike, I have a question that came up when we were discussing this topic before. Why do you consider pricing less flexible in 7.0, and how can you avoid the problems that might cause when moving from ECC? MichaelDebevec: Pricing in CRM in more encapsulated than in ECC - as a result, it is less flexible - or at least there is functionality in ECC that does not exist readily in CRM. However, there are other features of CRM pricing - for example, using external data sources, that provide significantly greater flexibility than in ECC. In addition, you have the option of holding off group condition processing until the end of the order in CRM. This tends to provide performance improvements. Antoine Cadot-Wood: Mike, that's interesting. Are their particular functions in ECC that simply don't exist in CRM 7.0? What sorts of things can't you do in CRM? MichaelDebevec: Cost-based pricing is not possible in CRM without additional work - this is because Costs are not condition records and the routines pull the cost from the valuation record or from a purchase order. You could probably use external data sourcing to overcome this but I would worry about performance. Certain forms of the dynamic data determination also do not work well. I would also wonder how cumulative pricing works since the SIS structures are populated in ECC and I do not think they are in CRM as well. Sara Andersson: Mike, 1.1 What scenarios exist to run between CRM and R/3? 1.2 What scenarios are recommended to run between CRM and R/3? MichaelDebevec: 1 - You can choose where to enter orders and where to maintain them. From a CRM side, the item category identifies where you would wish to do billing. So, you can order in CRM, delivery in ECC, Bill in CRM or Bill in ECC. 1.2 - I doubt if there is a recommendation, per se (at least I wouldn't give a categorical recommendation) but there are several constraints that will push you in one direction or the other. The things that I would consider in making your decision is driven in how you plan on using the system. The customer service scenario is more robust in the CRM space. So, if you are running an interaction center, then you are going to be in CRM; however, you can choose to enter the order in CRM or enter the order directly in ECC /p p /p p /p p /p p b /b /p p b /b /p p /p p /p p /p p b /b /p p /p p /p p br / /p p b /b /p p /p p /p p b /b /p p /p p /p p /p p /p p b /b /p p span style="text-decoration: underline;" a href="/crm" /a /span /p p span style="text-decoration: underline;" a href="/crm" /a /span span style="text-decoration: underline;" a href="http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/CRM" /a /span /p p /p p b /b a href="mailto:debevec@sapmentor.com" title="mailto:debevec@sapmentor.com" a href="mailto:debevec@sapmentor.com" title="mailto:debevec@sapmentor.com" /a /a /p p b /b span style="text-decoration: underline;" a href="http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/CRM" /a /span a href="http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/CRM/Articles/Defensive-Programming-Protect-Against-RFC-Disconnects?id=DA00694221914422BC2452656A4AEB91" /a /pThu, 07 Jun 2012 20:22:00 GMTQ&A on global SAP ERP HCM projects with Sven Ringling - transcripthttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/May/QA-on-global-SAP-ERP-HCM-projects-with-Sven-Ringling-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with iProCon 's Sven Ringling on managing and controlling the risks of local configuration and development in global HCM systems. Sven took questions on topics he&rsquo;ll be covering at one of his upcoming HR 2012 session -- the feasibility of a centralized approach to configuration, defining controls for local development, the local changes typically requested by clients, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Sven's responses in the HR Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Amy Thistle (moderator): Welcome to today's Forum! In today's HR Forum , we invite you to ask your questions about managing the risks of local changes in global HR projects. Today's exclusive, one-hour forum is with SAP HCM expert Sven Ringlin g of iProCon . Sven is an HR Expert author and featured HR 2012 speaker, and he'll be presenting a session on this topic at HR 2012 Milan in just a few weeks. Today, Sven will take ques...Wed, 23 May 2012 21:41:00 GMTMichael Doane's tips for building effective super user networks (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/May/Michael-Doanes-tips-for-building-effective-super-user-networks-QA-transcript
Insider Learning Network recently held an online Forum with ERP expert and consultant Michael Doane of CGI and moderated by Project Expert editor M.S. Hein. Michael took questions in a one-hour Q&A on super user networks posted in the Project Management Forum on May 8. Michael and attendees covered topics based on his recent super user case study, such as super user recruitment and incentives, costs of a super user program, pros & cons of centralizing your super user network, and succession planning for your network. For the complete discussions, see the Forum archive here , or read the handy, edited transcript below: M.S. Hein, SAPexperts: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Q&A on building super user networks! This is Michael Doane&rsquo;s third Q&A on Insider Learning Network, and today he&rsquo;ll be talking about building super user networks that last. Michael Doane is an Executive Consultant with CGI, and a well-known expert on post-implementation best practices and Centers of Excellenc...Thu, 10 May 2012 19:32:00 GMTTips from Joerg Boeke on tuning your SAP BW systems: Recent Q&A on improving query performance (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/April/Tips-from-Joerg-Boeke-on-tuning-your-SAP-BW-systems-Recent-QA-on-improving-query-performance-transcr
I recently moderated an online forum with BI 2012 speaker and BI expert Joerg Boeke. During this one-hour Q&A on April 24, Joerg took questions on improving performance and avoiding slow SAP BW queries, based on his session A technical guide to SAP NetWeaver BW landscape optimization for BI 2012. You can attend this session at the upcoming BI 2012 Milan conference, June 6-8. Questions covered topics such as performance issues with BEx Analyzer and Office 2010 upgrades, virtual characteristics and keyfigures, how BWA can improve and analyze BW performance, diagnosing memory allocation problems, when to use the high cardinality flag, partitioning infoproviders, APD, and combining compression & partitioning. You can view the Forum discussion at any time , or read the edited transcript of the discussion here: Bridget Kotelly Conference Producer, BI 2 012 Bridget Kotelly: We&rsquo;re looking forward to some great discussion and tips on tuning your BW landscape for better query performan...Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:55:00 GMTQ&A on troubleshooting payroll audits & process models with Mike Timm (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/April/QA-on-troubleshooting-payroll-audits-process-models-with-Mike-Timm-transcript
I recently moderated a live Q&A on Insider Learning Network with Mike Timm of Integrated Consulting Group. Mike is a speaker at our HR 2012 event, and gave a session on &ldquo;An Up-to-Date Guide to Troubleshooting the Payroll Process If and When You Encounter an Error.&rdquo; During the HR Forum&rsquo;s one-hour Q&A on April 17, Mike took questions on payroll errors and best practices for auditing payroll results. For more on SAP payroll, I also invite you to our upcoming HR 2012 Europe conference in Milan , June 6-8. To follow the discussion, review the transcript here, or view the entire Q&A in the HR Forum . Amy Thistle: Welcome to today&rsquo;s HR Forum! In this one-hour Forum, we invite you to ask HCM expert Mike Timm your questions about preventing and fixing payroll problems Mike Timm is a managing partner at Integrated Consulting Group, an SAP HCM payroll expert, and a longstanding speaker at our annual SAPinsider conference. You may have seen him last month at our HR 2012 conference in Las Vegas -where he gave a great session on this topic - or listened to his recent podcast . Today, Mike will be taking your specific payroll questions here in the HR Forum for the next hour. Thanks for joining us today, Mike! Mike Timm: Thank you. I see many questions already posted and will get started with the Q&A. Thank you all for joining. Kir Chern: Hello Mike, I have 2 questions: 1. What is your recommendation to minimize the tedious process to do regression testing every time when support packages are applied especially when there are modified/custom sub-schema, functions etc.? 2. What is the best practice to keep the up with the support packages that impact localized payroll at the same time trying to minimize the impact of the other HCM/FI modules belonging to different system owners who are not keen to upgrade because of the work to re-test? Thank you. Regards Kir Chern Mike Timm: I&rsquo;ve been around a wide variety of testing methods by companies. Some very basic with little testing to others that spend significant resourcing. I like to find the middle road for efficiency and cost reasons when possible. Having Basis copy back production to a test system right after a production payroll is processed, but prior to posting to accounting, third party, etc. works well. This allows you to run a payroll simulation for the same period in QA and compare easily by looking for /56n wage types. SAP moved to CLC&rsquo;s (country legal changes) and made things much easier for scheduling and testing. Typically, you can wait until mid-summer to get the HR Support Pack necessary to install the CLC later in the year. The bulk of impact to HR and other areas is with the HRSP and mid to late summer doesn&rsquo;t typically impact the other areas as much. When the CLC is released in October/November, most of the impact is on payroll so less is needed from the other areas. My preference is to put in the mid-summer HRSP, CLC, and then put in HRSPs again around March. We keep up with HRSPs without impacting the other areas as much with this schedule. DarcyCogdell: Hello Mike: Regarding configuration of payroll calendars, 1. how far into the future should calendars be generated? 2. is it correct that the "current" calendar year payroll calendar should not be re-generated? 3. is there a correct time of year to create and change payroll calendars? 4. if the settings of payment models change, is re-generation of payroll calendars required? 5. do you have tips and tricks in this regard? Kind regards, Darcy Cogdell Mike Timm : I typically generated calendars through 2020. I&rsquo;d like to say there is a specific reason, but it is just a nice round number. You always want to be at least a year or two out in production, but in your QA system it is nice to be out several years. Correct is probably not the term I would use. You need to be extremely careful that you get all the settings during regeneration set perfectly so you don&rsquo;t have period date changes that could cause you considerable problems. I like to review the upcoming payroll calendar during HR Support Pack or CLC installation towards year end. Typically, HR is readying the company calendar at that time so payroll can be in sync. Regeneration of payroll calendars is not required. When you change the payment models, you are basing it on the existing payroll calendar. As long as you are comfortable with the payroll calendar you should have no issues. I like to have the business review the payroll calendar and compare it against the upcoming year holiday schedule. If regeneration is necessary we can take that step, but I&rsquo;ve found more often that only a few tweaks directly in the table are necessary. An example would be a check date falling on 7/4 would be changed to 7/3. R&eacute;mi C. Corriveau: Hello Mike, I would add a word of caution about generating the Calendars too far ahead. If the procedure is not well documented and there is employee turnover, external consultants could be required when they end. I would recommend to go through the process at least every second year (we go through it every year). Mike: I agree and request the business look at the payroll calendar each fall when HRSPs or CLCs are installed. R&eacute;mi C. Corriveau: In December, the Payroll Calendars for the following year have already been generated one year ago but may require last minute changes. That is also the time we try to generate the Payroll Calendars for the second year in the future. As for Time Evaluation, we generate the Work Schedules at least 4 or 5 years into the future so that long term absences could be entered with accurate absence count and Quota deductions. DarcyCogdell: Hi Mike, Regarding infotype 0014 and 0015 and overtime premium pay: We are required to ration across regular rate hours, non-discretionary bonus earnings which are processed using infotype 0014 and 0015 for the purpose of calculating overtime premium pay. Other than ABAP code, what would you recommend? Thank you, Darcy Cogdell Mike Timm: I&rsquo;m going to make the assumption that ration across means the regular hours are assigned cost elements (cost center, wbs, order) and an employee could have several cost elements during a given period. You could process the logic through payroll rules that look for specific wage types in IT0014/0015 and then split apart the amounts based on the cost center splits. I recently did something similar to this and it was tedious, but it is simple to follow through the payroll log if someone has a question. You'll get to test your payroll rule abilities, which does make it fun. The other option is to use a custom operation/function to perform the same logic. The issue here is that it is more of a black hole because you can see what goes in and what comes out, but what is going on within the ABAP code may require a technical person to review. DarcyCogdell: To be more specific, we are required to apportion the additional pay (IT0014 and 0015) against all work weeks that may result from the (function RGRTE) regular rate / overtime calculations when positive time entry occurs via CATS DB. In other words, an employee may transfer in the middle of the 1 st week of a biweekly payroll, from an 80 hours work week, to two 40 hour work weeks. There results 3 work weeks in the pay period rather than 1 or 2 (for which the math is simple), and depending on the day of the week, the portion per work week of the bonus will vary. This detail is needed to properly calculate bonus periodicity. It would be great to apply the bonus to the ZL. Suggestions? R&eacute;mi C. Corriveau: Hello Darcy, If Time Eval can send the "Hours" information to Payroll through table ZL, than it should be possible to calculate the premiums through Payroll Personnel Calculation Rules. R&eacute;mi Mike Timm : Time evaluation may be able to create a statistical type wage type that can help with the calculation in payroll. I recently worked with a company that provides guaranteed payments to an employee whether they worked their normal week or not. To get everything to work properly, we have time evaluation generating a statistical wage type that is then used in payroll as an indicator for calculation of the guaranteed payment. DarcyCogdell: You are describing the direction we are heading. Thanks for the affirmation. Ella: How do you handle late master data changes after payroll processed but not yet completed? Do you use PU01 to delete the results and reprocess? Are there other options? Mike Timm: If you have processed payroll and have results, but have not posted to accounting, ran pre.dme, etc, you can just rerun the payroll and it will overwrite the results. If you've run pre.dme or posting to accounting you'll need to undo those steps, but using pu01 shouldn't be necessary. DarcyCogdell: Hi Mike, Regarding staying informed and up-to-date with SAP improvements: It seems that those attending the entry level classes, provided by SAP, learn of new solutions. What is the best way to keep up with new functionality and new solutions rolled out by SAP when not at the entry level? Thank you, Darcy Cogdell Mike Timm : If you have the opportunity to attend the annual HR conference you'll have a wide variety of topics and informational levels. If you've done some classes, I think you'll find more bang for your buck with the conference. SAP has a large presence and have sessions specific to new functionality in the pipeline. You'll even get hints towards things still not released to the general public. Attending local ASUG is also useful because you'll be discussing topics with others that are in the trenches as well. DarcyCogdell: Thank you so much. This forum has been very helpful and encouraging. Be safe and have glorious days. Mike Timm: No problem, I've enjoyed the questions. Please don't hesitate to contact me if more comes up in the future. DarcyCogdell : Count on it Mike. I look forward to our discussions. HanneNickelsen: Hi Mike. If we run global payroll for different countries in the same system what would your recommendation be for setting up the bank keys for a new country or when upgrading with new support packages: 1. adding keys to transport and sending the transports to the productive system 2. transfer keys into each system (Developer-Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:24:00 GMTQ&A with Birgit Starmanns on Disclosure Management, XBRL, and next steps for financial disclosures (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/April/QA-with-Birgit-Starmanns-on-Disclosure-Management-XBRL-and-next-steps-for-financial-disclosures-tran
I recently moderated a web forum with SAP's Birgit Starmanns on SAP's disclosure management functionality. Birgit took questions on the timetable for XBRL compliance, the application's integration with SAP financials and costing, the rapid-deployment solution for the application, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Birgit's responses in the Financials Forum or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Gary Byrne (moderator) : Thank you for joining us today! In today's Financials Forum , we will be asking SAP's Birgit Starmanns questions on new options from SAP for automating financial and regulatory reports, including XBRL submissions and quarterly reports. I invite you to ask your questions as well, as you consider how this will affect your financial teams. I'd also like to thank Birgit Starmanns for taking questions today for readers of Financials Expert and members of Insider Learning Network. Birgit is a frequent contributor to Financial...Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:15:00 GMTQ&A with Rohana Gunawardena on Automating Financial Processes (Transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/April/QA-with-Rohana-Gunawardena-on-Automating-Financial-Processes-Transcript
In a brief interview, Financials expert Rohana Gunawardena of Quality Systems & Software answered questions about tips for optimizing FI, configuring SD and FI, and integrating FI and MM.Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:53:00 GMTExpert advice on Access Control 10.0: Q&A with SAP GRC expert Simon Persin (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/March/Expert-advice-on-Access-Control-10-dot-0-QA-with-SAP-GRC-expert-Simon-Persin-transcript
What&rsquo;s the relationship between the 4 components of SAP BusinessObjects Access Control 10.0? What are implementation & migration best practices, what are your configuration options, and how can Access Control components best work together? On March 27, I moderated an exclusive one-hour online Q&A with expert, consultant, and GRC 2012 speaker Simon Persin of Turnkey Consulting in Insider Learning Network&rsquo;s Compliance Forum. You can also meet Simon at GRC 2012 in Milan , June 6-8, where he will be presenting a session on&ldquo; Expert guidelines for implementing and integrating the four components of SAP BusinessObjects Access Control .&rdquo; Follow the full Q&A discussion in the Compliance forum , or read the edited transcript here: Allison Martin: Welcome to today's forum on Access Control 10.0 with Simon Persin of Turnkey Consulting. Simon is a featured speaker at GRC 2012 in Milan , coming up June 6-8, and will be presenting a session on today&rsquo;s topic: Integrat...Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:44:00 GMTiPad vs. Android for SAP BusinessObjects tools: Q&A with Dr. Berg (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/March/iPad-vs-dot-Android-for-SAP-BusinessObjects-tools-QA-with-Dr-dot-Berg-transcript
How well will your SAP BusinessObjects tools maintain their look and feel on Android devices? Will your iPad users be satisfied with BI reporting performance? Scott Wallask , editor of BI Expert and BusinessObjects Expert , recently moderated an online forum with BI expert Dr. Bjarne Berg . Dr. Berg took questions on ComeritLabs&rsquo; recent in-depth usability testing of SAP BusinessObjects tools for Android and iPad on March 20. Follow the discussion in the SAP BusinessObjects forum , or read the edited transcript here: Scott Wallask: Hi everybody &ndash; Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum comparing iPad vs. Android for SAP BusinessObjects tools. Thanks for joining us &ndash; and a special thank you to those who have posted a question already. We&rsquo;re looking forward to some great discussion today. And as always, we appreciate Dr. Bjarne Berg of Comerit joining us today and taking your questions about the recent testing by Comerit Labs of SAP BusinessObjects tools. Just to review...Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:38:00 GMTQ&A with Michael Pytel: Moving from CCMS to Technical Operations in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/March/QA-with-Michael-Pytel-Moving-from-CCMS-to-Technical-Operations-in-SAP-Solution-Manager-7-dot-1-trans
On Wednesday, March 21, Solution Manager Expert editor Scott Priest moderated a live Q&A with NIMBL&rsquo;s Michael Pytel on &ldquo; What you need to know about migrating from CCMS to Technical Operations in SAP Solution Manager 7.1.&rdquo; The 7.1 release of SAP Solution Manager introduces Technical Operations for monitoring, administration, and analysis of SAP system performance. How will Technical Operations replace CCMS? Where does it simplify your SAP system monitoring and configuration? What steps can you take now to prepare for migration to Technical Operations? To review the discussion, visit the Forum here, or read the edited transcript below. Scott Priest: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum on migrating from CCMS to Technical Operations with SAP Solution Manager expert and Michael Pytel of NIMBL Consulting Thanks, Michael, for joining us today. TomKissel : Michael, We are currently using Sol Man 7.01 SPS 27 in a minimal way (basically, we implemented it to get upgrade keys an...Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:13:00 GMTGRC 10.0 architecture - What's changed? A Q&A on preparing for SAP BusinessObjects GRC with Kurt Hollishttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/February/GRC-10-dot-0-architecture-Whats-changed-A-QA-on-preparing-for-SAP-BusinessObjects-GRC-with-Kurt-Hol
I recently moderated an online Q&A with Kurt Hollis on the GRC 10.0 architecture. During this one-hour Forum, Kurt Hollis took questions on the 10.0 release of the SAP BusinessObjects GRC suite, its new features and its streamlined architecture: what has changed, how it simplifies the life of system administrators and architects, and tip for preparing for the new release. Kurt took questions on a range of topics, such as Access Control migration, dedicated server requirements, tips on installing Content Lifecycle Management, performance issues with risk analysis, virtualization of AC solutions, and other topics. You can review all the all the posts in the Forum here, or read the following edited transcript of the discussion: Allison: Welcome to today's forum on GRC 10.0 architecture, with Kurt Hollis of Deloitte. Kurt is a featured speaker at GRC 2012 in Las Vegas this March, and will be presenting a session on SAP GRC architecture, with a focus on the 10.0 release. This is an oppo...Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:02:00 GMTNew Features for ESS & MSS with EhP5: Q&A with Jeremy Masters on new self-services functionality with SAP ERP HCMhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/February/New-Features-for-ESS-MSS-with-EhP5-QA-with-Jeremy-Masters-on-new-self-services-functionality-with-S
I recently moderated an online HR Forum with HCM expert Jeremy Masters on preparing for enhancement package 5 and the changes it brings to employer and manager self-services. Members asked their ESS/MSS questions in an exclusive, one-hour live Q&A with SAP ERP HCM expert and HR 2012 speaker Jeremy Masters on Tuesday, February 21 in the HR Forum. The discussion was lively on topics such as Talent Management infotypes for ESS/MSS, how enhancement packages affect existing functionality, new functionality for changes to compensation with EhP5, SAP Portal requirements, and tips on making the most of the new look and feel with EhP5. To review the entire Q&A, you can view the Forum page here, or read the edited transcript below. Amy Thistle: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum! We invite you to ask your questions about how enhancement packages are changing ESS and MSS in this one-hour forum with SAP HCM expert Jeremy Masters of Worklogix. Jeremy Masters is an HR Expert advisor and author and f...Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:50:00 GMTThe Future of ABAP: What every ABAP developer should know - Q&A with Discover ABAP author Thorsten Franzhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2012/February/Future-of-ABAP-Q-A-with-Thorsten-Franz
<p>Like any development language, ABAP is a constantly evolving and continues to adapt to changes in business and technology.&nbsp;We recently moderated an online forum with SAP mentor and <i><a href="http://www.sap-press.com/products/Discover-ABAP-%282nd-Edition%29.html">Discover ABAP</a> </i>author&nbsp; Thorsten Franz&nbsp; on&nbsp;what has changed in this most recent edition of <em><a href="http://www.sap-press.com/products/Discover-ABAP-%282nd-Edition%29.html"><i>Discover ABAP</i></a></em>, and how&nbsp; ABAP developers can&nbsp;prepare for changes brought on by HANA, OLAP, cloud computing, mobile devices, OO programming, and open source technologies.</p>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMTSAP Solution Manager 7.1 for project management: Q&A with Michael Pytel (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/December/SAP-Solution-Manager-7-dot-1-for-project-management-QA-with-Michael-Pytel-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with SAP Solution Manager expert and NIMBL consultant Michael Pytel on new 7.1 features, upgrade options, troubleshooting BPP installation, comparing standard support vs. enterprise support, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Michael's responses in the IT Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. You can also listen to my conversation with Michael with his advice on moving to SAP Solution Manager 7.1. On Insider Learning Network, listen to a quick podcast from my recent interview with Michael on 7.1. Solution Manager Expert subscribers can read or listen to the full interview here . Scott Priest: Welcome to today&rsquo;s Forum on SAP Solution Manager 7.1 with expert Michael Pytel. In this one-hour Q&A, we invite you to post your questions for NIMBL&rsquo;s Michael Pytel on what&rsquo;s new in 7.1 to enhance your project management and planning. Thanks, Michael, for joining us today. ALE...Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:05:00 GMTBuild a training program for greater user self-sufficiency: Q&A with SAP's Kerry Brown (Transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/November/Build-a-training-program-for-greater-user-self-sufficiency-QA-with-SAPs-Kerry-Brown-Transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with SAP&rsquo;s Kerry Brown, Vice President of Enablement for SAP Education, on training that builds end user self-sufficiency and adoption. Kerry gave practical advice on the right time for introducing training, making the most of the tools you have to support training, creative ways to cultivate both formal and informal super users, no-cost benchmarking opportunities, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Kerry&rsquo;s responses in the Project Management Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Laura Casasanto: Welcome to today's Q&A with SAP&rsquo;s Kerry Brown on enabling more self-sufficient end users. Kerry is Vice President of Enablement for SAP Education, and has plenty of SAP customers about their training needs, successes, and new strategies. We&rsquo;re happy to have Kerry back in the Project Management Forum for a followup to her live Q&A earlier this year on change management , and her interviews with Project Expert on that topic . Kerry is always ready to share her practical advice from her own project experience as well as in her role in working with SAP customers. Thank you, Kerry, for joining us again today and taking questions over this next hour! ChuckLazan: We are starting an SAP implementation project; migrating from another off-the-shelf but highly customized ERP system. What best practices can you share to improve end user acceptance of the SAP solution? Awareness and process training prior to implementation? Recommendations for follow-on end user training post Go-Live, etc? Kerry Brown: Chuck, an exciting change for your company. Certainly awareness is the first step to developing acceptance for your user population. One of the best approaches is to share success stories from other companies that have relevancy to your organization - I expect you became familiar with some of these during your selection process. Alternately, contact SAP or ASUG for other contacts. With regard to other considerations for acceptance: A key answer for everyone in the company is WIFM - what's in it for me? The more specific the benefit to each user the better - though answers of how the solution benefits the company overall supporting growth, cost management, etc., are also valid. Lastly - for post go-live training: It is great that you are thinking about that now. The reason being that you can develop training approaches that are more easily maintained and updated to support sustainability in as self-sufficient a manner as possible. Tools such as Productivity Pak that support collaboration between authors and users are also helpful to drive performance support and a community of people within your company helping support ongoing performance and process improvements. Ellen Walsh: Hi Kerry! Where can i get more information on Productivity Pak? Kerry Brown: Ellen - here is the link on Productivity Pak . It is a great tool for documentation, performance support and, as I mentioned, collaboration between user and author. Ideally it is used starting during testing with continued use through end user training and beyond go-live. However, we see customers adding this into their toolset for ongoing documentation and performance support post go-live as well. This link on sap.com provides more information on the product as well as a link to a demo and a solution brief. Kathleen Baine: Can you tell me best practices on having an SAP Power User Group? At what level in an organization should it be organized? Should IT be the owner and facilitator of the power users, or the business units? What incentives are recommended to recruit and retain power users? What is expected of power users? Kerry Brown: A great and often asked question. Recently Julie Stokes from Fluor wrote an article "How to Build a Super User Program that will Last" based on her experiences at Fluor. Some key elements of her learnings are: build a succession plan, create a role definition for the super user. One success factor that we discussed as well that is a great one is to create an opportunity 1-2x per year for the super user to connect with the process owner at an executive level. Typically this doesn't happen very often and is a way to recognize and reward the super user as well as create ongoing communication across the organization regarding process improvement. With regard to organization - it should be owned wherever it will receive the most support. In my experience the super/power users are typically from the business, as "super" use of SAP is not about IT, but rather about running a 'best run business'. There are a couple of approaches to this: full business ownership or alternately shared ownership between business and IT. What this raises is really the ideal scenario where the engagement model between business and IT is clearly outlined and commitments from both organizational groups are understood and defined supporting budget, headcount and associated investment. In terms of recruitment and retention - the recognition mentioned in the last post is a fantastic way to build a cycle of improvement and communication. Often it is difficult to 'pay' differently for employees depending on your union or compensation rules. Recognition can afford a privilege or honor to being part of the super user community and positively impacting the business. The roles of super users vary by organization: full time, part time, support, training, documentation, etc. What is key is to build a strategy that will work for your organization in terms of coverage and responsibility. In reality, EVERY company has a super user program. Some are just completely informal and are a 'word of mouth' support system, we all know who we call for help - ideally though creating some structure around these helpful people will provide more momentum and consistency. Laura Casasanto: Kerry, it seems a lot of customers are challenged by the business to lower TCO per user for training and roll-out costs. What are you seeing companies do to successfully achieve those lower numbers? Kerry Brown: You're right - and this continues to be a goal post-go-live as well. This really involves a number of components, some we have been discussing already: - engagement model between business and IT - super user program and capabilities - user performance measurement - ongoing training approach for sustainability We have talked a little about the business/IT engagement model - why this is critical is that if it is broken, it's difficult to drive change. IT will continue to own the 'costs' but cannot fully impact user performance and total cost of ownership as they don't own the business which is where the user performance plays out. Measurement is a powerful way to guide TCO activities and investment. Some of the challenges we see customers face is what to do and who to help - with good information on user performance it is possible to target training efforts and $$ effectively. A great way to do this is by using Knoa - a tool that shows the user activity and takes away urban legend regarding issues...using a scorecard it shows the volume of errors, time of transactions, etc...and as a result can focus the solution on the user, the system, etc. On a positive note - this also allows identification of strong performance - the fastest...with the fewest errors...which can be replicated to leverage best practices across an organization. Dave Hannon: Kerry, What about timing for training on a specific rollout? Is it possible to start user training too early and lose some momentum before go live? Kerry Brown: Training timing for a given rollout should always follow the golden rule - "use it or lose it". In effect making sure that training is connected as closely as possible to use and application of that training. A good way to gauge this is to think of training in context: - a day in the life - a week in the life - a month in the life - a quarter in the life - a year in the life By doing that you can determine when to train what content - so the day one activities are trained pre-go-live and the others are trained post go-live or developed as support guides for self-learning depending on the complexity. One good approach for this is simulations, something that can be done using documentation tools like Productivity Pak that I mentioned earlier. This supports the opportunity to watch, try and test a users capability - the testing component call also be linked to your LMS or compliance tracking. In terms of 'too early'...it is possible - yes, as really, folks are busy doing their day-to-day job. Process training and familiarization with business transformation are good topics that will educate the employees on expectations, as well as set them up for successful training which will be more specific to the activities they will perform and learn in training. Laura Casasanto: For those who registered for today&rsquo;s Q&A , the download link you received with your registration confirmation includes a sample project roadmap with suggested points for training opportunities along the way - from planning through post go-live. If you haven't yet registered, you can still do so now here. Scott Wallask: Hi Kerry -- Do you have any recommended benchmarks for a successful user adoption effort for a new module or implementation? I saw a figure recently that gauged success at an 80% user adoption rate and was wondering if that was reasonable. Kerry Brown: User adoption is really what it's all about - "where the rubber hits the road" if you will. The ability for folks to do their jobs effectively is what drives ROI for the company, which is why SAP was selected in the first place. What I can tell you is that in a survey we did on Organizational Change Management (OCM) we saw a 20% increase in user acceptance based on a good program for OCM. Right now we are completing an updated survey looking at user adoption, training, organizational change management, super users, sustainability, etc...and what's exciting about this survey is that it is supported by our Value Management team, which will allow customers to benchmark now as well as compared to best practices and the marketplace as well as leverage in the future to do ongoing benchmarking vs peers or other industries. I encourage you and everyone on the Q&A session to complete this survey and give yourself some good information for now and in the future. In terms of your adoption rate - that is reasonable and is a reflection of the program for user adoption used. This would include communication, organizational alignment, training to ensure full preparation with respect to organizational alignment, roles and responsibilities, incentives and skills & capabilities. Some companies do testing of proficiency prior to providing security - often done through the simulation tool I mentioned earlier. Kathleen Baine: Has anyone else developed customized online Help for SAP? We did. We have many custom processes and procedures for our different locations, and each one needed custom training. We have it in an online Help format as well as the original training manuals created for each. Do other companies do this? We are told our online Help is quite valuable to the users. Kerry Brown: Providing online help is certainly best practice, and as you mentioned, very valuable and appreciated by the user population. What makes this most valuable is when it is designed by role to meet the user 'where they are at' in a customized manner. Good components to include in this are training links, job aids, definitions, policies, etc. and the more specific the better. Earlier we discussed best practices regarding super users - this is a good place to link back support and authorship and role definitions to connect the user, support, document maintenance and such to drive a continuous process of enablement throughout your company. Sounds like you're on the right track! Antoine Cadot-Wood : Hi Kerry, Thanks for making yourself available today. I've been talking with a lot of customers lately that are starting mobility projects, and had a question: How is training different for mobility projects vs. for example an ERP rollout? Kerry Brown: Great question! And one that I have been exploring inside SAP as well as with SAP customers. The scope of mobility projects can vary in scope of audience, but typically the breadth of transaction or skill changes is smaller. What this means is some elements can be self-taught. What is key is to ensure that you are able to achieve not only skill execution, but also adoption. The components of communication, role expectations and in some cases training are all essential then to get the desired adoption to drive the expected results. I would caution or highlight not to forget these components and think "if you build it they will come" - just putting technology out there without adoption will not achieve the anticipated results. Laura Casasanto: Kerry, you mentioned some good tools in your answers today. Along those lines, what are some tools customers already have or can easily implement to assist in training? Kerry Brown: I would encourage as customers look at their toolbox to consider the many ways or alternative ways to leverage what they have, ie: many customers have Productivity Pak, but aren't using the collaboration component to drive performance support within the user/super user community. Another reason I suggest this is to embrace and explore the way technology...can support performance and drive social learning - for example, SAP has a free tool called Streamwork that can provide an entry into these kinds of tools sapstreamwork.com/ I would also like to highlight the Education Resource Center which has a variety of whitepapers, docs, etc. that can give you some more ideas. Kathleen Baine: Thanks. Great info from this forum. Kerry Brown: Why thank you - glad it was helpful! Ellen Walsh: Kerry & Laura, You provided a wealth of valuable information today - thank you! Kerry Brown: My pleasure - thanks for participating! Laura Casasanto: Thanks to all who followed the discussion today! A full summary of all the questions will be available here in the Project Management Forum and in the Project Management Group on Insider Learning Network. The Project Management Group also offers ongoing information and additional resources on project management, training, archived Q&As from the Project Management forum, and alerts for upcoming Q&As. Kerry Brown: Thanks Laura. I would like to share again with everyone that we are completing an updated survey looking at user adoption, training, organizational change management, super users, sustainability, etc...and what's exciting about this survey is that it is supported by our Value Management team which will allow customers to benchmark now as well as compared to best practices and the marketplace as well as leverage in the future to do ongoing benchmarking vs peers or other industries. Please complete this survey and give yourself some good information for now and in the future. This is a global survey so will also be helpful to those of you addressing current or future global implementations and support questions. Laura: I also want to share some additional resources: - If you were a registered attendee of last week&rsquo;s Managing Your SAP Projects 2011 conference, you can download Kerry&rsquo;s presentation on training and change management techniques (in the Conference Materials section on your home page). - Kerry also recently moderated a free webinar series from SAP: the Learning 2020 series on the Future of Training with M arcia Conner, social learning expert and columnist with Fast Company magazine. - And again here&rsquo;s the link to a free benchmarking tool that SAP customers will no doubt be interested in: Simply complete this survey before November 15 and give your feedback on Enablement offerings from SAP. Not only will you receive a customized report with the results, you&rsquo;ll also get access to a tool to run your own benchmarking reports and measure yourself against your peers on a go-forward basis. This was a great forum! Thank you to everyone involved! And again, thanks for taking questions here today, Kerry! Check back at Insider Learning Network often to learn about future live forums held on a variety of topics from project management, to analytic tools, to financial solutions, and everything in between.Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:53:00 GMTMaking sense of your Transportation Management options: Recent Live Q&A with Chris Moose (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/November/Making-sense-of-your-Transportation-Management-options-Recent-Live-QA-with-Chris-Moose-transcript
Laura Casasanto, SCM Expert. I recently moderated a web forum with IBM 's Chris Moose evaluating your transportation management options with SAP solutions. Chris took questions on planning for the move to TM 8.0, SAP planned support for TP/VS, TM 8.0 data integration with ECC, among others. Chris Moose is a long-time author for SCM Expert , on topics such as Warehouse Management, TRM and mobility. For the full Q&A on Transportation Management, you can view the questions and Chris's responses in the SCM Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Be sure to look for future Q&As &ndash; watch your member newsletter and join the SCM Group for updates! Laura Casasanto (moderator): Welcome to today's SCM Forum on transportation management and logistics. I invite you to post your questions for IBM&rsquo;s Chris Moose. Post your questions for advice on how to plan and evaluate your transportation logistics needs, when and why to move to SAP&rsquo;s standalong transporta...Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:23:00 GMTWhat's changed in profit center accounting with SAP General Ledger?http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/October/Whats-changed-in-profit-center-accounting-with-SAP-General-Ledger
Financials expert Paul Ovigele took questions in a online discussion on the <a href="http://sapexperts.com/financials" target="_blank">SAPexperts Financials Hub</a>, moderated by editor Gary Byrne. Read Paul's responses on changes that have come about with profit center accounting in SAP General Ledger.Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:39:00 GMTBuilding Super User Programs: Q&A with Doug Whittle (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/October/Building-Super-User-Programs-QA-with-Doug-Whittle-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with Managing your SAP Projects 2011 speaker Doug Whittle on building a super user program to drive user adoption and efficiencies. Questions came streaming in on choosing and rewarding your super users, full-time vs. part-time super users, striking the right balance in the relationship between IT, help desk, and super users, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Doug's responses in the Project Management Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Amy Thistle (moderator): Welcome to today's Q&A with Doug Whittle on building a super user program! We invite you to ask Doug your questions -- just click on the "Post Reply" button to post your question on super users. Doug has extensive experience as a consultant to many SAP customers as they create or rebuild their super user programs. Doug is also a frequent speaker at SAPinsider events, including our annual Project Management event. [Editor&rsquo;s Note...Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:29:00 GMTEWM advice from Chris Moose: Q&A from the live Forum on SAP Extended Warehouse Management (Transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/October/EWM-advice-from-Chris-Moose-QA-from-the-live-Forum-on-SAP-Extended-Warehouse-Management-Transcript
AJ Whalen, Wellesley Information Services I recently moderated a web forum with IBM 's Chris Moose on implementing SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM). Chris took questions on the WM to EWM conversion, handling task creation, HUs and pick exceptions, goods issue, serial numbers, end user training, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Chris's responses in the SCM Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Also, be sure to look for details on Chris Moose's next online Forum, scheduled for November 2, on SAP Transportation Management. Join the SCM Group for registration details as soon as they&rsquo;re announced. AJ Whalen (moderator): Welcome to today's SCM Forum on warehouse management and SAP EWM. We invite you to post your questions for IBM's Chris Moose. Chris h as worked with many early adopters of the SAP EWM software, and can give his advice on pitfalls to avoid, along with how to plan and evaluate your warehouse manage...Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:02:00 GMTTranscript from Live Q&A with James Roeske: Preventing SoD violations with scheduled and automated user access reviewshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/Transcript-from-Live-QA-with-James-Roeske-Preventing-SoD-violations-with-scheduled-and-automated-use
I recently moderated a web forum with James Roeske of Savera Systems on preventing SoD violations with scheduled and automated user access reviews. James took questions on timelines for implement automated user access reviews, the logging capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects Access Control, how automated user access reviews affect organizational dynamics, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and James's responses in the Compliance Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Allison Martin (moderator): Welcome to today's forum on Access Control and User Access Reviews (UARs). This is a great opportunity to ask James Roeske your questions on developing scheduled User Access Reviews to protect your SAP systems, based on his extensive experience with SAP BusinessObjects Access Control. James is a compliance expert, a featured speaker at our GRC conferences, and President at Savera Systems. James, thank you for joining us today! James Roeske:...Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:16:00 GMTQ&A with Scott Cairncross on EPM 10.0http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/QA-with-Scott-Cairncross-on-EPM-10-dot-0
I recently moderated a web forum with Reporting & Analytics 2011 speaker Scott Cairncross on planning for release 10.0 of EPM, and what it means for your current SAP business analytics. Scott took questions on the level of difficulty involved in migrating, Excel and mobile integration options, new financial consolidation features, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Scott's responses in the Financials Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Kristin Bent (moderator): Welcome to today's Q&A on EPM and BPC. In this one-hour forum, we invite you to ask EPM expert Scott Cairncross your questions on BPC and the next steps for preparing your systems for implementation and integration with SAP Enterprise Performance Management. Thanks for joining us today, Scott! Larry Olson: Is there any "SWAG matrix/factor" for planning the level of effort for "moving" from SAP BPC MS 7.5 to 10.0 given X number of Applications, associated dimensions,...Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:05:00 GMTQ&A with Jon Jenkins and Joe Lee on SAP E-Recruitinghttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/QA-with-Jon-Jenkins-and-Joe-Lee-on-SAP-E-Recruiting
I recently moderated a web forum with HR 2012 speakers Jon Jenkins and Joe Lee on making e-recruiting an effective part of your talent management strategy. Jon and Joe took questions on the new SAP E-Recruiting features in enhancement package 5, infrastructure requirements for running SAP E-Recruiting, integration and customization options, and the value of implementing SAP E-Recruiting, among other topics. HR Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. JacobAsirvatham: What is new in EHP5 for eRecruiting? Please advise. Joe Lee: Enhancement Package 5 contains quite a few new features. Below are some of the highlights: - Email verification process for Candidates - Improvement of application process w/o previous registration - New POWL queries -- Open Registrations -- with new buttons to allow recruiters to complete registration, and send confirmation email - Admin -- ability to delete unverified candidates - New "Internet Presence" section of candidate profile -...Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:56:00 GMTTranscript from Q&A with Jay Riddle on SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/Transcript-from-QA-with-Jay-Riddle-on-SAP-BusinessObjects-BI-4-dot-0
I recently moderated a web forum with Reporting & Analytics 2011 speaker Jay Riddle on preparing your SAP landscape for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0. Jay took questions on migrating to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, connectivity with OLAP sources, security differences between 3.1 and 4.0, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Jay's responses in the SAP BusinessObjects Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Kristin Bent (moderator): Thank you all for joining us today in the SAP BusinessObjects forum for this live Q&A! And welcome, Jay! Thanks for being here. It looks like a few folks have already posted, so please feel to start with those, and move on to new questions as they roll in. To post your question for Jay, please select the "Post Reply" button below. And please don't forget to refresh your browser to see the latest posts. A quick note: If you have not yet registered for this Q&A, you can still do so. When registering...Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:29:00 GMTTranscript from recent Q&A on pricing configuration with the co-author of "Effective Pricing in SAP ERP"http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/Transcript-from-recent-QA-on-pricing-configuration-with-the-co-author-of-Effective-Pricing-in-SAP-ER
Pricing rules are getting more complex, so how do you configure automated pricing processes that meet unique business requirements and conditions &ndash; but without excessive customization? SCM Expert author Rajen Iyer recently took questions in the SCM Forum here on Insider Learning Network on the topic on pricing for SD and MM. In addition to his tips and articles for SCM Expert he is also the coauthor of the SAP PRESS book Effective Pricing in SAP ERP . Rajen offered tips on pricing and customer hierarchies, performance tips, and retroactive pricing with STOs. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Rajen&rsquo;s responses in the SCM Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. AJ Whalen (moderator): Welcome to today's SCM Forum on enhancing your pricing techniques in SD and MM. Rajen Iyer is coauthor of Effective Pricing in SAP ERP . Rajen is also a logistics and global trade services expert and can provide insights on integrating pricing into your f...Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:08:00 GMTTranscript: Q&A with Ashish Saxena on Mobility and SAP CRMhttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/Transcript-QA-with-Ashish-Saxena-on-Mobility-and-SAP-CRM
I recently moderated a web forum with CRM Expert author Ashish Saxena on evaluating options and planning for CRM mobility projects for Sales & Service. Ashish took questions on planning a mobility assessment, building a mobility project team, timelines, UI requirements, and other topics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions and Ashish&rsquo;s responses in the CRM Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below. Antoine Cadot-Wood (moderator): Welcome to today's forum on your mobility options for CRM Sales & Service. This is a great opportunity to ask your questions on the array of CRM mobility solutions for SAP customers, and to ask CRM expert Ashish Saxena, coauthor of the recent CRM Expert article &ldquo;A Step-by-Step Guide to Select a Mobility Platform That Supports Sales and Service,&rdquo; for his advice on how to evaluate your current mobility needs and next steps. Ashish, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to the questions coming in, I'...Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:46:00 GMTTranscript of ESS/MSS Q&A with Martin Gillethttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/Transcript-of-ESSMSS-QA-with-Martin-Gillet
Q&A on Designing and Enhancing Self-Services: Ask HR expert Martin Gillet your questions about ESS and MSS configuration I recently moderated a web forum with SAP Mentor and HR Expert technical advisor Martin Gillet on tips and tricks for configuring self-services for ESS and MSS. Martin wrote the newly released SAP PRESS book, Configuring and Customizing Employee and Manager Self-Services in SAP ERP HCM . For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Martin&rsquo;s responses in the HR Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of th e Q&A below. M.S. Hein, HR Expert (moderator): Thanks you for joining us, and thanks to Martin Gillet for taking the time to respond to these questions today! Brian Reilly: As I understand it, to truly leverage the power of integrated HR processes through ESS and MSS for Talent Management, there are certain key foundation elements that need to be in place. One of these that we are grappling with is the establi...Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:56:00 GMTQ&A on HR Reporting with HR Expert Danielle Larocca (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/September/QA-on-HR-Reporting-with-HR-Expert-Danielle-Larocca-transcript
I moderated a Web forum with HR Expert author and SpinifexIT executive consultant Danielle Larocca on SAP reporting options for HR, on June 22, 2011. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Danielle&rsquo;s responses in the HR Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A, below. Make Sense of Your SAP ERP HCM Reporting Options: Q&A with HR Expert Danielle Larocca M.S. Hein (Moderator): Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on SAP HCM reporting with Danielle Larocca! Danielle, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to questions, I'd like to start with one. I know at this year&rsquo;s HR conference in Amsterdam there was a lot of talk about ad hoc query versus SAP query, and there is a lot of confusion out there on this topic. What are your thoughts? Danielle Larocca: That&rsquo;s a popular question. Both Query tools&mdash;SAP Query and the Ad Hoc Query&mdash;can be used to create basic reports of your SAP HCM data. The A...Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:28:00 GMTSAP NetWeaver BW Experts Richard Hunt & Tom Venables on protecting SAP NetWeaver BW reports (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/August/SAP-NetWeaver-BW-Experts-Richard-Hunt-Tom-Venables-on-protecting-SAP-NetWeaver-BW-reports-transcrip
I recently moderated a web forum with data security experts Richard Hunt and Tom Venables on the authorizations strategies introduced in BW 7.0 and the challenges of coordinating security between BW and ERP systems. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Richard and Tom&rsquo;s responses in the BI Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A, below. Protecting SAP NetWeaver BW reports: An exclusive Q&A today with data security experts Richard Hunt and Tom Venables on authorization strategies in BW 7.0. Allison Martin (Moderator) : Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on protecting your BW reports. Thanks to everyone for joining us, and thanks for taking these questions Richard and Tom. For those who have not yet registered for the Q&A, click here to receive an exclusive download of Richard Hunt&rsquo;s presentation on BW authorizations from GRC 2012. &ldquo;What Every SAP Customer Now Needs to Know About Analysis Authorizations,...Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:02:00 GMTTips to make the most of your SAP Support (Q&A transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/August/Tips-to-make-the-most-of-your-SAP-Support-QA-transcript
I recently moderated a web forum with SAP&rsquo;s Director of Safeguarding Brian Greenberg and Director of Support Services Kelly Carroll on the tips to maximize your SAP Support. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Brian and Kelly&rsquo;s responses in the IT Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A below: Making the most of your SAP Active Global Support: An exclusive Q&A with SAP&rsquo;s Brian Greenberg and Kelly Carroll Laura Casasanto (Moderator) : Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on the tips to make the most of your SAP Active Global Support. Before you respond to the questions posted, I wanted to ask you how you see customers using Safeguarding in relation to their system integrators? Is Safeguarding used in addition to consulting services? Brian Greenberg: Safeguarding is in addition to, and complimentary to, the system integrators services. Consulting typically is responsible to build and configure the solution...Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:00:00 GMTTechnical Tips and Tricks to Get More out of Your SAP ERP Financials Transactions (Transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/August/Technical-Tips-and-Tricks-to-Get-More-out-of-Your-SAP-ERP-Financials-Transactions-Transcript
Our readers asked Financials conference speaker Paul Ovigele for his technical tips and tricks to get more out of SAP ERP financials. Read this transcript to review his advice on improving Financials performance, from our Q&amp;A, moderated by&nbsp;<a href="http://sapexperts.com/financials" target="_blank">SAPexperts Financials Hub</a> editor Gary Byrne.Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:16:00 GMTDr. Berg on designing and enhancing Xcelsius dashboards (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/July/Dr-dot-Berg-on-designing-and-enhancing-Xcelsius-dashboards-transcript
By Molly Folan I recently moderated a web forum with Dr. Bjarne Berg on design, deploying and enhancing Xcelsius dashboards. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Dr. Berg&rsquo;s responses in the SAP BusinessObjects forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A, below. Designing, deploying and enhancing Xcelsius dashboards: An exclusive Q&A today with BusinessObjects expert Dr. Bjarne Berg Molly Brien (Moderator) : Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on enhancing Xcelsius dashboards. Thanks to everyone for joining us, and thanks for taking these questions Dr. Berg. For those who have not yet registered for the Q&A, click here to receive an exclusive download of Dr. Berg's presentation &ldquo;Step-by-step instruction to build and enhance Xcelsius dashboards for optimal performance, availability, and usability,&rdquo; which takes you through the process of building and optimizing an Xcelsius dashboard. &nbsp; We have a...Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:57:00 GMTAchieve significant inventory reductions using standard SAP tools you already own:http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/June/Achieve-significant-inventory-reductions-using-standard-SAP-tools-you-already-own
Achieve significant inventory reductions using standard SAP tools you already own: An exclusive one-hour Q&A today with SCM expert Keith Searls I recently moderated a web forum with SCM expert and Reveal partner Keith Searls on getting more supply chain intelligence from your current SAP systems. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Keith&rsquo;s responses in the SCM Forum,, or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A, below. Keith will be one of the featured speakers at SAPinsider&rsquo;s Supply Chain Bootcamp seminar in Chicago, July 18-20, Las Vegas, November 2-4, and Amsterdam, December 5-7. Marcy (Moderator) : Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on managing your supply chain better with the tools you already have &ndash; including stock analysis, supply chain exception monitoring, and improved supplier collaboration. Keith, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to questions, I'd like to start with one from a recent...Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:35:00 GMTTranscript from Q&A with BI Expert Penny Silvia on Self-Service Analyticshttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/June/Transcript-from-QA-with-BI-Expert-Penny-Silvia-on-Self-Service-Analytics
Q&A with BI Expert Penny Silvia on Self-Service Analytics (transcript) I recently moderated a web forum with BI expert and IBM consultant Penny Silvia on building sound strategies for self service analytics. For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Penny&rsquo;s responses in the BI Forum , or read excerpts from the transcript of the Q&A, below. Avoid the common pitfalls of self-service analytics: An exclusive Q&A today with BI expert Penny Silvia on building a sound strategy for self-services Kristin Bent (Moderator) : Welcome to today&rsquo;s forum on BI and self-service analytics with Penny Silvia Penny, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to questions, I'd like to start with one that stems from your session at the most recent Reporting and Analytics conference: In general, is there a particular type of information that lends itself to self-service reporting and, conversely, is there a particular type of information tha...Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:07:00 GMTTranscript from last week's live Q&A with SAP BusinessObjects GRC 10.0 expert Kurt Hollishttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/June/Transcript-from-last-weeks-live-QA-with-SAP-BusinessObjects-GRC-10-dot-0-expert-Kurt-Hollis
I recently moderated a web Forum with Deloitte specialist and GRC 2011 speaker, Kurt Hollis on preparing your systems for GRC 10.0 For the full Q&A, you can view the questions from Insider Learning Network members and Kurt's responses in the Compliance Forum , or read a transcript of the Q&A, below: Allison Martin: Welcome to today's forum on GRC 10.0 with Kurt Hollis Kurt, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to questions, I'd like to start with one that stems from your session at GRC 2011: Can you go over the details of what is now on Java and what pieces of GRC run on ABAP? Kurt Hollis : Hi Allison and thanks for your question, this is a good one. The previous version of GRC Access Control (5.3, 5.2, 5.1) runs on the SAP Netweaver JAVA stack. But now with SAP GRC 10.0, the Access Control components are now running on the SAP Netweaver ABAP stack. This is a big improvement. So now, the entire Suite of GRC products run on the ABAP stack which includes Process Control...Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:15:00 GMTProtect your HR data privacy: Q&A on securing and monitoring data with SAP ERP HCM (transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/May/Protect-your-HR-data-privacy-QA-on-securing-and-monitoring-data-with-SAP-ERP-HCM-transcript
Editor's note: Data compliance experts and GRC 2011 speakers Richard Hunt and Heinrich Wilking of Turnkey Consulting recently took questions in an HR Forum on protecting HR data privacy, ensuring data compliance in your SAP HR systems, and mitigating data privacy risk. Richard and Heinrich are featured speakers at the GRC 2011 in Amsterdam, June 7-9; Allison Martin of SAPinsider's GRC 2011 conference moderated the event. For the full Q&A, view the posts in the HR Forum , or read this transcript of the Q&A here: Allison Martin: Welcome to today's forum on securing and monitoring your HR data! Richard and Heinrich, thank you for joining us today! Before you respond to questions, I'd like to start with one that stems from your session at GRC 2011: Those who registered for this Forum can also access your guide to creating a data privacy popup [from Richard Hunt&rsquo;s GRC 2011 presentation &ldquo;Improve Data Privacy Compliance and Segregation of Duties (SoD) Controls in an SAP ERP Hu...Fri, 27 May 2011 19:26:00 GMTBuild a better SAP project through change management: Exclusive Q&A with SAP's Kerry Brown (forum transcript)http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/May/Build-a-better-SAP-project-through-change-management-Exclusive-QA-with-SAPs-Kerry-Brown-forum-transc
In case you didn&rsquo;t get a chance to check out today&rsquo;s live forum, &ldquo;Build a better SAP project through change management: Exclusive Q&A with SAP's Kerry Brown,&rdquo; below is the transcript in its entirety. To read a recent Q&A with Kerry on the subject published in Project Expert , register here . ______________________________________ Kerry Brown: Welcome everyone to the forum - Sapphire last week was a great opportunity to talk with many SAP customers and community members about user adoption and enablement. I look for ward to continuing the conversation and answering questions tomorrow on the webforum! Looking forward to getting started - thanks for signing in early! Laura Casasanto: Kerry, thank you for joining us today! I&rsquo;d like to touch on a point you made in our recent Q&A. In it, you mentioned that when change is done right, you don&rsquo;t notice it was done at all. Keeping that in mind, how should the champion of a change management strategy initia...Thu, 26 May 2011 00:28:00 GMTSummary: Forum with Dr. Berg on boosting BI performancehttp://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/March/Summary-Forum-with-Dr-dot-Berg-on-boosting-BI-performance
Recently, BI expert Dr. Bjarne Berg answered questions from Insider Learning Network members about improving BI reporting performance in an exclusive moderated BI-BW forum on March 9, 2011. The following is an edited transcript from this forum. You can also see Dr. Berg&rsquo;s own summary of the forum in his blog . About Dr. Berg Dr. Berg is an internationally recognized expert in Business Intelligence and is a frequent speaker at major BI and SAP conferences worldwide. Previously, Dr. Berg was a Senior Manager at PriceWaterhouseCooper's global data warehouse group, the Director of BI at VIP consulting and the Vice President of IT at Comerit Inc. Dr. Berg was a featured speaker at BI 2011 in Las Vegas on reporting and BI, including a session on &ldquo;A Comprehensive Guide to Plan for, Implement, and Maintain SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator.&rdquo; Kristin Bent: Welcome to the BI-BW Forum hosted by Dr. Bjarne Berg. Thank you for joining us today, Berg! I see that there are some quest...Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:32:00 GMTTranscript of "Moderated forum: Norman Marks on GRC"http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Q-and-As/2011/March/Transcript-of-Moderated-forum-Norman-Marks-on-GRC
Below is a transcript of a recent discussion held in Insider Learning Network's Compliance forum moderated by Norman Marks . _______________________________________________________________ Laura Casasanto : Welcome to the Compliance Forum on GRC strategies, hosted by Norman Marks. Norman Marks, an expert on governance-, risk-, and compliance-related issues and a thought leader in the area, was here February 21-25 to answer your GRC-related questions. To get more of Norman's thoughts and advice on the topic, listen to our podcast &ldquo; Five Areas of Focus to Help You Create a Successful GRC Strategy &rdquo; and read &ldquo; GRC Explained: A New Way of Looking at Risk ,&rdquo; an exclusive Q&A with Norman previously only available to Project Expert subscribers. You'll come away with a greater understanding of the meaning of GRC, its importance, and what a company needs to know to achieve a rock-solid GRC strategy. Also head over to Norman &rsquo;s blog , where he discuss...Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:23:00 GMT